


A Myriad of Possibilities

by Musicalrain



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexuality Spectrum, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Children, Developing Relationship, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gay Parents, Gen, Gender Issues, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Magic Revealed, Mercenaries, Minor Character Death, Modern Girl in Thedas, Off-screen Rape, Other, Pre-Canon, Queer Themes, Qunari Children, Qunari Culture and Customs, Rape Aftermath, Self-Discovery, Self-Insert, Team as Family, Trauma, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musicalrain/pseuds/Musicalrain
Summary: What if you found yourself in Thedas? What if you share your story with Adaar before the Inquisition, and the journey leads you on a path you'd never thought possible?This is my story.
Relationships: Original Human Character(s)/Original Qunari Character(s), Original Qunari Character/Original Qunari Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this here and there since November 2018; if you think this deserves an Explicit rating, please let me know.
> 
> **Warnings** graphic depictions of violence, trauma, minor character death, bodily injury, dark thoughts, dark themes, off-screen rape, horror

One of the most repeated lessons of my childhood was to never get my hopes up too high, because they could be so easily crushed or taken away. It applies to dreams and wishes and all sorts of things that shouldn’t be depressing but usually end up so. Like, wondering what Thedas would _really_ be like, and finding yourself smack dab in the middle of it. 

Somehow.

“Ya think the bastard was a bloodmage?”

“Bas saarebas filth.”

“Sharp in claw and tooth, pitch in soul… Um, no. That’s not right...”

“Why so much broken _glass_ everywhere? This shit’s gonna stick in my boots.”

“I thought all the _blood_ and _human sacrifice_ would be more concerning than a bit of glass.”

“Um, I think that human is breathing.”

“No, that human is awake.”

“Same thing.”

* * *

Once the sight of so much gore and blood and the stench of death is nothing more than a not-so-distant memory, I start to ask questions. Lots of them, because the people I find around me don’t look like cosplayers.

And the world isn’t how I know it to be. 

Even the air smells different.

“Where am I?” I ask the one with a large bow strapped to his back. He’s the one who’d picked me up and carried me outside, gave me water and rubbed my back while I cried.

“Well,” he rubs the back of his neck. He’s large - all corded muscle and broad shoulders. His skin is the same color as my favorite pair of antique hair combs, and there’s horns, like a ram’s, sprouting from his forehead and curling against the sides of his head. “This Duke hired us to route out his bastard son, who turned out to be a bloodmage and shit. We just dragged you out of his hidey-hole.”

A woman, broader than this man, and another man who keeps muttering things and rhyming, seem to be quietly having a heated argument a few paces away. Their skin is grey-tinged, and they have horns too. They are all large and wearing armor with warpaint stark against their scarred and weathered skin. They keep stealing glances my way, so I assume their argument is about me.

“And _where_ are we?” I press.

“Arlesans.”

I stare at him, but he doesn’t say anything else. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “And where is that?”

“Orlais…?” He looks confused now. “Where did you think you were?”

* * *

I overhear someone call him Adaar, and I think I’m about to go into shock from it all. Or, maybe I’m already in shock… Or hallucinating. I’d put money on hallucinating.

“Hey. Hey, now,” he’s rubbing his big hands against my legs, his face creased with concern. I’m shivering, but he’s not even wearing a jacket.

I don’t even notice that my breathing is all fucked up until I start to match his breaths when he asks me to.

He smiles at me when I calm, and then he looks over his shoulder from where he’s crouched in front of me. The two that were arguing are still arguing, but I don’t hear their words.

“I’m taking her with us,” he tells them.

“Er, we should let the Duke’s people deal with this, don’t you think?”

“Shokrakar is _not_ going let you keep the human, Adaar.”

His face twists. “One - she’s not a pet. Two - I’m my own man.” He settles back on his haunches. “...Outside of the job,” he amends. He shrugs one shoulder. “Besides, her name is practically Qunlat. She’ll fit right in.”

* * *

“That’s Kaariss, and that’s Sataa,” he tells me. We’re walking towards a city, or something - I can see buildings in the distance. They look nothing like any buildings I’ve encountered before, even from this distance. “This isn’t the whole company,” there’s something like pride in his voice. “Some are on another job in the south, and Shokrakar and the others are in the inn up the hill there,” he points, but I can’t quite make out what it is that he’s pointing at. 

“Uh huh,” I answer, when it seems like he’s waiting for me to say something. 

“This was just supposed to be a quick job - we were hired to find the guy, not, you know,” he shrugs. 

Right. Everything that happened, and me. Not what they were expecting. Well, that makes two of us.

* * *

I can hear the shouting from where I’m sat, outside the room and down the hall. They were right to be concerned about Shokrakar.

Adaar comes out into the hall, looking around until he spots me, a few minutes later. His shoulders seem taught with strain and his jaw is set stubbornly, perhaps. 

“Boss wants to talk to ya,” he tells me, and I nervously stand to trail after him. They had stopped to pinch a blanket for me to wrap around my soiled clothes once we got into town, but I can still feel eyes on my back while I follow him down the hall. Then again, that might be because of the company I find myself in.

Shokrakar is tall and intimidating - the largest Qunari I’ve seen yet. Her heavily scarred face is already scowling when Adaar closes the door behind us.

“Seems you made some kind of impression. And now someone wants to keep you for a mascot,” she scoffs and scowls, and I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say.

Adaar huffs a breath to my left, but doesn’t say anything to contradict her; she’s his boss, and I don’t know what I _want_ or where I would even be if it weren’t for him, so I’m just going to bite my tongue.

I haven’t even had a _chance_ to think of all the implications or _what I should do._

That is, if all this is real and not some elaborate hallucination or coma or some shit.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” I don’t know if she sounds angry, or if she’s just being louder, but she does take a step forward.

This reaction just makes me clam up even tighter, curling into myself. I don’t want a confrontation, and I don’t know what she wants me to say. I don’t know what to do.

“She’s traumatized,” Adaar tries to placate.

“All the more reason for her to be someone else’s problem.”

Her face looks furious as she takes the last few steps towards me, grabbing for my shoulder, but I’m afraid - I’m afraid of her, I’m afraid of this place, I’m afraid for what this all _means_.

“ _Don’t touch me!_ ” I shriek, drawing away, but _something_ happens.

I _felt_ something, some kind of force - like a particularly strong gust of wind, _coming_ from me. And everything goes to white noise.

When I peel my eyes open, Adaar and Shokrakar are half sprawled against furniture and the floor. Adaar looks shocked, but Shokrakar has a truly frightening smile stretching the scar bisecting her lips.

“You didn’t tell me the human was bas saarebas!” She cackles.

* * *

Shokrakar seems to take to me much better after that, seemingly gleeful that I hurt her; I don’t understand. She tells me that I can stay on a trial basis, and if anyone asks, I’m a Viddathari Vashoth, so her kith doesn’t lose their reputation.

But… that was magic, wasn’t it? At least, that’s what they’re saying. 

Someone named Taarlok offers to get me outfitted and draw up a contract. 

“I can’t read,” I blurt to him and Adaar, who has been practically glued to my side since he found me. I’ve seen their written language, and it is not the same like our spoken languages. I have no idea what any of the signs, banners, or flyers anywhere say.

“You can have a… cosigner,” he offers after a moment’s thought, bright eyes shifting towards Adaar and then back to me. “Your contract will be for six months, with an extension if you prove to be a valuable asset. I will also put in a clause that we will _try_ to protect you from Templar scrutiny, but that cannot be guaranteed, you understand.”

Oh, fuck. I didn’t even think of that. If I have magic - somehow, what the _fuck_ \- then I am not safe. I am even more _not safe_ than I already thought I was, by, like, tenfold at least.

My immediate survival seems to hinge on these mercenaries - on Adaar’s inexplicable kindness towards me, and Shokrakar’s approval.

* * *

I stay that night in a double bed room with Adaar. Supposively he’s to be rooming with someone named Meraad, but he’d left for that other mission in the south the day prior.

I was introduced to the rest of the Valo-Kas company, the ones that weren’t on that other job, and there was a meal. I didn't really eat, but I’d watched. And I watched after while the others were swapping stories and tending to their gear in Shokrakar’s suite until she kicked everyone from the room late into the night.

I think Taarlok was probably the one to find me a change of clothes and send for a basin of water and soap. Adaar makes himself scarce while I tend to cleaning myself up - blood and who-knows-what dried onto my skin, hair, and dirt clinging to every thread of my clothes - and it’s the first time I’m left alone with my thoughts. 

They’re chaotic, but I finally decide to just go with the flow and see if by chance I wake up from all of this in the morning. This can’t be real; this has to be something crazy.

Adaar pops his head into the room sometime later, and I wave him in. He’s strange, and I can’t help but wonder at his motivations.

The silence drags on as we settle into bed. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep; this is all too much.

“You’ll do well,” Adaar breaks the silence, intruding into my misery. “Shokrakar has wanted a saarebas for awhile. Haven’t found one that she likes enough to sign on, though.”

“Why does she like me?”

I can hear his shrug against his sheets. “I’d like to think it’s cause I vouched for you, but it’s probably because you knocked her on her ass. I’ve never seen that before.”

There’s something like awe in his tone, and I wonder what’s wrong with these people - why is violence impressive? Why is it something to covet? 

“And if I hadn’t? If I was just a regular person?” If I wasn’t valuable, or worthy in her eyes?

“Then she would’ve turned you away,” he says honestly. “I still would’ve tried to help you, though.”

“Why?” I blurt. He doesn’t make sense; I’ve been trying to figure out his angle, but I don’t _know_.

He’s quiet for so long that I don’t think he’s going to answer, so I squeeze my eyes shut and will all the bad thoughts and worries away.

“I was in a bad place before,” he says quietly, the deep baritone of his voice nearly drowning out the syllables. “I had no one there for me. I found my way here, but it was… a long road.” He’s quiet again, thinking, and he says finally, “You reminded me of myself.”

* * *

I’m left alone a lot, at first. It’s not surprising; they don’t know me, I haven’t signed anything, and I have nothing. I’m left with my thoughts - how nothing has changed, how I’m still here, on the vividy of my dreams, the sensations I’ve associated with the magic I can feel coursing through my veins, how fucking _tired_ I am, my fear; it’s nearly enough to drown me.

I’ve tried to dig up those feelings, use my magic, a few times with Adaar when he’s told me it’s safe; it’s so strange. I’ve only been to manipulate the sensations a little, but it’s enough to shake me.

“Good news!” Taarlok greets me happily - he’s a little odd, but I like him well enough. “I have your finalized contract and consignments!” He jerks his head, “Shall we go to your room and have a look?”

I falter, and he seems to understand why. “Shokrakar sent for Adaar after approving the contract. We understand he will be your cosigner.”

He got me a cloak, new boots, a pack filled with essentials, two sets of long tunics and trousers… and a mage’s robe, with a staff that he unwraps with a flourish. 

“The robe is modified Orlesian battlemage vestments,” he says happily, obviously pleased with himself. “The style had to be changed quite a bit so it wouldn’t be _obvious_ , but the enchantments are still intact.”

The staff looks so small and breakable in his big hands, but he smiles as he lifts the slight bulk of it. “This was chosen since it can make a passable spear, to keep hidden it’s true nature, you see. It’s actually a smuggled disciple’s staff. It has a basic electricity rune, but I’ve been assured you should find it more than sufficient.”

When I touch the spear, I can _feel_ a surge of… something. Magic? I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s almost like a burst of adrenaline or a shot of espresso. It’s something that awakens my senses and makes my blood thrum.

When Adaar arrives he looks overjoyed at the supplies laid out on my bed, and Taarlok wastes no time in delving into the contract.

The cost of the supplies - especially the robe and staff, which seemed to cost a good chunk of money - will be deducted as a percentage of my earnings from future jobs until paid off. The whole contract seems straightforward enough, and even Adaar says it looks a lot like the one he had signed. There’s obviously some differences, because I am a _mage_ , but in the end Adaar signs before me, and I deliberate for a moment before I mark an ‘X’ awkwardly on the space Taarlok points to.

That’s it - I’ve signed up with the Valo-Kas company. How fucking unbelievable.

* * *

“I could teach you,” Adaar blurts sometime that night.

Earlier I had tried on everything to make sure it fit, and felt a bit overwhelmed. For some reason at his words those feelings go to the wayside as I’m struck with the thought that since he’d found me, we’ve been bunking together. Where has Meraad been staying? Why has Shokrakar allowed this? Is it to ensure loyalty to the company, by making sure I befriend Adaar?

When he repeats himself, I try to pay attention. “Teach me what?”

“How to read,” and there’s something nervous in his tone. He tends to do this, interrupt the quiet of night to talk, most often about something he thinks is important. “If you wanted to learn.”

Learn how to read their written language? That doesn’t exactly sit well with me. On one hand, it’s an essential skill, but on the other… it would be like accepting this, the implausibility of it all. By immersing myself in this world, this culture, it would feel like giving up.

“Not right now,” I say, closing my eyes and not yet willing to let my hope die. “But maybe someday,” I allow, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but also glad for his genuine offer.

* * *

Sataa teaches me the mechanics on using my staff; she uses a broadsword, and apparently that translates well enough. After our third lesson, she calls me friend, and I feel... honored.

* * *

The first mission I’m sent on is escorting an Orlesian caravan to Jader; there’s bandits. Apparently the Ferelden border is rife with them since the Blight; people are desperate, and that makes the roads outside the safety of the city dangerous.

Two things I learn: the Qunari thrive in battle - their strength and tenacity are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They are fierce as a unit, and it would be beautiful if it weren’t swathed in blood and carnage; if people’s lives weren’t taken because of a caravan full of useless jewels and pretty things that have no real purpose.

The other, is my fear. Death is a horrible, horrible thing that I _do not_ want a part of. I’m afraid for my safety, for the safety of my new friends, and afraid of the pain and suffering that’s inflicted on the bandits. They are people - people that may be undeserving of death, and the brutal way in which they die. 

I do nothing; frozen with fear and eyes wide and heart aching at the senseless loss of so much life, of how devalued life is in this place. The truth of Thedas is worse than anything I’d thought it’d be.

* * *

Shokrakar reems me out - threatens to leave my ass behind in Jader and take back her investments. Adaar isn’t there; I’m left alone in the face of her anger and judgement. My only redeeming value seems to be that I’d somehow fumbled my way in healing a debilitating injury to Kaariss’s arm and shoulder. She doesn’t know that it was mostly luck; I have no idea what I’m doing. But she said a healer was valuable, and that I better shape up or I’d find myself left behind on the next job.

* * *

Our company nearly buys out a small, probably disreputable, tavern-slash-inn near the outskirts of town. Adaar finds me outside, leaning against the aged building, staring sightlessly at the night sky, and dwelling in my increasingly depressing and dark thoughts.

For once, he doesn’t say anything, and I’m thankful; I don’t think I could have a conversation right now. 

He stands close enough that his arm brushes against mine, and I’m thankful for the small comfort.

* * *

We have separate rooms that night, but I go to him. I can’t sleep, restless as my thoughts are, and… I miss him, I think. His presence has been a comfort, one that I’ve unknowingly come to rely on. 

I’ve depended on him for so much, and it even extends to my sleep.

I stand before his door, trying to think of what to say before I knock, when I hear something. I know that sound; Adaar has _company_. I feel my face burn, and my thoughts blank; in my stupor I hear _more_ that I definitely shouldn’t, and am suddenly quick to turn around and go straight back to my room once I get a hold of myself. 

That’s embarrassing, isn’t it? 

I call myself stupid and foolish and all sorts of things before I force myself to lay in bed until I fall asleep. I don’t sleep very well.

* * *

After that, I decide that I should probably give Adaar some space; I know I tend to cling, and he doesn’t need that. He’s got his own thing going on, and I’m in the way.

* * *

I ask Sataa how to be a good mercenary. What she tells me, is this:

“A kith is a creature with many limbs. You have to fight as one, and trust in each part to do their duty. The brain thinks for the creature, the fist protects. Pain affects the whole.”

What she implied is clear - I am a fist, and Shokrakar is the brain; I cannot decide not to fight and put the whole company at risk. They are relying on me to do a job, and they have their own duties without having to look out for me on top of it.

I have to stop thinking about only myself and think about what I’ve agreed to do - I’m supposed to be an integral part of this mercenary company. I have people relying on me. 

And death… death is unavoidable. 

* * *

This company travels where the jobs take us - we hardly stay in one place for more than a handful of days, maybe a week or two at most. Shokrakar doesn’t like to be idle, and Tal-Vashoth seem to not want to draw too much attention to themselves outside of work. We are constantly traveling, and I am so tired. The rest of the company are all familiar with this and are not sympathetic to my sore muscles or exhaustion. There are two dozen Valo-Kas, and each and every one of them are used to this routine.

All of this is so outside my comfort, and is a complete turn around from my life before. 

I’ve been here so long that I’m nearly resigned to this fate. 

If I don’t stay with this company I will likely end up hurt, sick, or captured by Templars. Possibly even see to my own death. I am not self-sufficient here; I cannot rely on myself to keep myself safe. I cannot rely on my own knowledge to navigate this world. 

I rely on these people, and they rely on me, too. I’ve muddled my way through healing so many injuries - everything from candle burns to fractured bones - that I trust that I can call up that magic. I don’t know spells, I know feelings, and my instinct seems to have gotten me by so far. 

Shorakar calls me Imekari, for my nativity, Sataa explains. The way she says it, though, it sounds more like a pet-name rather than an insult. She seems to have become fond of me as my drive and determination have strengthened with every job we take. We have not faced bandits again, but there’s danger in everything we do.

The company seems to have taken to me, for the most part, and for that, I’m thankful. 

* * *

We’re in Val Firmin, close enough to Lake Celestine that the sight of it inexplicably makes me nostalgic. I ache for home in a way that I’ve never done before. I miss _everything_ \- my friends, my family, my little baby niece, and my dog. I never truly knew homesickness before. I do, now.

We’re staying at another tavern, waiting for another job to fall through. Shokrakar doesn’t seem very picky in where we stay, so long as it tolerates Tal-Vashoth and can provide enough food and ale to keep everyone happy. We pay the staff well, and are respectful of the establishments we visit; we want to be able to return if work leads us back. And people tend to stay clear of a group of horned, armored giants, so we’re mostly, blessedly, left to ourselves. 

I’m the exception, of course. 

“If I may say, a woman such as yourself should not be cavorting with such _beasts_.”

Oh, great. Another guy trying to hit on me by insulting my friends. _Yay_.

“Hm, yes, you would be far more suited for… _refined_ tastes. Something much more Orlesian, do you agree?”

He doesn’t take my silence as dismissal, and keeps talking, obviously loving the sound of his own voice.

“I myself find Orlais to be full of such fascinating things, even in rather _surprising_ places, no?”

I ignore him, waiting for the cup of tea I’d ordered, and wishing for this day to just be over with already.

“This guy bothering you?” A familiar voice booms from behind me.

I look over my shoulder, and smile, “Venak hol.” One thing I’d learned, Qunlat unnerves most people. It’s pretty funny, actually.

My tea arrives, finally, and I slide over the appropriate amount of coins while Adaar wraps one massive arm around my shoulders, leading me away from the bar to the twisted, disgusted face of my unwanted Orlesian company. I could care less. That guy was slimy and just screamed thug. 

People are unfairly _rude_ to Tal-Vashoth, and I can’t tolerate it.

They are the nicest bunch of people I’ve ever met in this place.

“Are you gonna stick around for cards? Sata-Kas is dealing.”

I shake my head, despite some part of me yearning for the company. I’m terrible at cards - always have been - and truth be told, some of the guys are still uneasy around me. I’d rather drink my tea and try to convince myself to go to bed early.

I end up staring at the lake out my window, wondering about things I can’t change, and generally being depressing as all hell. It seems to be a recurring theme.

After I’ve drained my tea and changed into my nightclothes, there’s a knock on the door. I’m bunking with Meraad tonight, and he wouldn’t knock. 

I’m cautious as I answer the door, but I needn’t have worried; it’s only Adaar.

“Hey,” I say curiously. He looks tipsy, at least. There’s a hint of a flush under the dark color of his skin. 

“Can I come in?”

I nod, waving him inside. I can’t think of why he’d want to see me now, though. Maybe he has an injury he wants me to see to?

“You okay?” I ask cautiously.

He nods, slumping down onto the bed Meraad had claimed. “Have you been avoiding me?” He asks after a moment, and I’m shocked to silence.

I’ve been giving him space - trying to make other friends in the company and carve my own little space without clinging to his. 

I hesitate, and say, “Not… really,” while wincing internally. “I’ve been trying to give you space,” I add hurridley.

“Why?” He looks truly confused, and, perhaps, a little hurt. “Have I done anything that would make you think that I don’t-” he cuts himself off, shoulders slumping uncharacteristically. 

“I just thought you’d like some privacy,” I fumble to explain. “I thought I was a little too… dependent on you, maybe, and I didn’t think that was fair.”

“Why would you think that?” His expression is so upset it makes my eyes flick to the floor. I hear him get up from the bed, shuffling towards me, and so I tear my eyes from the floor to crane my head up to meet his gaze.

“I didn’t mind you needing my help. It actually… made me feel useful. A different kind of useful.”

“Why would you want me weighing you down, though?”

“You weren’t - you haven’t,” he’s quick to assure, and he looks so earnest. “I took you on as my responsibility, and then… we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to be in your way,” another truth.

“You aren’t.”

* * *

We’re camping out in the wilderness - dirt and mud and rain - tracking a criminal for a bounty. I’d volunteered for first watch, and after awhile Adaar joins me silently, bags heavy under his amethyst eyes. Guess it’s his turn for insomnia, something that seems to plague everyone often enough.

The silence is companionable, if heavy with some kind of unknown emotion, and after awhile he says,

“I left home around this time, years ago now.”

I can’t read his tone, but I comment back truthfully, “I’m really not from this place.”

He snorts, “I think everyone knows that, even the youngling Tal-Vashoth.”

He doesn’t get what I’m saying - how could he? - but his comment makes me smile wryly, and I bump his shoulder, err, well, his arm, with my own playfully.

“Tell me about home, Adaar.”

* * *

“Why the bow?” I ask, staring at the rather massive ironbark bow strapped to Adaar’s back. He’s the only archer of the group; everyone else wielding various blades, maces, mauls, shields, and pikes. 

“When I was a kid, I learnt to hunt,” his tone is that of someone who’s had to explain this many times before. “You either hunted or you watched sheep; I took the more interesting path.”

I pretend to think about it for a moment. “I probably would’ve watched sheep.”

His resulting laugh startles a nest of giant spiders.

* * *

“Shanedon, Imekari,” Shokrakar greets me with a grin.

I nod my head and smile back, unsure why she’s come to see me.

“I have something for you, my bas saarebas.” 

She passes me a satchel that looks full to bursting, and when I open the worn canvas, I see a stack of books of various thicknesses, aged scrolls, and sheafs of paper bound with twine. 

“I thought you could learn more offensive spells,” her grin is large and gleeful. “I read of something called a Tempest - could you imagine the chaos? Lightning raining down onto our enemies! They would shit a nug!”

I smile reflexively, although the thought makes me queasy. Instead of refusing, what I’m sure she thinks is a great gift, I try to hedge around the issue - the issue being that I have not killed anyone, and I do not want to change that anytime soon. 

“I appreciate this,” I say, patting the satchel, “But I’m afraid I don’t know how to read.”

She waves this off as if it’s nothing. “We will find someone to teach you, and we will find a safe place for you to practice new spells.”

* * *

I decide to ask Adaar to teach me.

“I think these were smuggled from a Circle,” he says curiously, flicking through the contents of the satchel. “Most seem to be about spells, but there’s books on alchemy and herbalism, too.”

“You told me once that you could teach me,” he looks to me, and his eyes are bright. “Could you teach me to read these?” It’s not giving up, I tell myself, it’s accepting my circumstances. Maybe not too different, but there’s a line there.

“Of course.”

* * *

I learn many things in the weeks, months, that follow.

One such thing, is that my magic seems to lean towards drawing strength from spirit energies - arcane and creation magics, especially, but also telekinetic force magic. The first spell I’d ever done was a Telekinetic Burst, not a Mind Blast - I learn the difference.

I am not naturally a Spirit Healer, much to a few of my companion’s dismays - but that wisps are drawn to me. They do not act aggressive in my presence, but rather fuel my spells as I learn them - especially the creation magic. 

Through slow discovery, because it takes _time_ to learn how to read and study, I glean that perhaps this natural affinity, one that’s not so common, may be indicative of how I came to be here. Wisps are drawn to like things - I am a person, not a spirit, but maybe that means something.

I’ve thought that blood magic brought me here - and that’s probably true to an extent, but a spirit, or spirit _s_ , were probably involved in the process. Demons, a large amount of wisps - _something_.

Basic lightning spells seem to be my default offensive, either because of the staff I wield or because wisps are drawn toward electricity, maybe both.

I can’t make a Tempest, and Shokrakar seems saddened at that. I can, however, affect the gravity around something. Which is not as showy, but does amuse her. Pleasing Shokrakar is important, because she is my boss but also because she is my friend.

But after months of learning, of studying, of trial and error - that seems to be the most powerful spell that I can do. Maybe it’s because I’m self-taught, even with the support of the Valo-Kas, but also maybe because I’m just not naturally a very powerful mage. 

* * *

We’d just returned from a fortnight-long trek through the Nahashin Marshes hunting for a supposed pack of rabid wyvern for a sizeable reward - we broke up into three groups to cover more area, and Shokrakar’s group found the singular rabid wyvern - and were maybe an hour outside Val Foret when we came across a group of Tal Vashoth half-starved and camped outside the city.

Shokrakar offers them to join us and Taarlok mutters about contracts with a bright gleam in his eyes. They join us, and now there are thirty Valo-Kas. Adaar is no longer the only archer; we have four, and I’m no longer the only mage.

The Saarebas is Tal Vashoth with his handler, who calls him kadan. They are literally the most tragic couple I’ve ever witnessed before. Saarebas wears the scars of his imprisonment, although not the physical chains and collar, and does not speak to anyone but Arvaarad. 

I hear amongst the others that Arvaarad’s demeanor is unusual; he is sympathetic and compassionate and should hate Tal Vashoth, but he is one. They all seem to be under the impression that he will turn traitor and return to the Qun.

I’m not so sure - I’ve seen how he looks after Saarebas, and I saw the look on his face - of relief and hope - when Shokrakar made her offer.

Their gear gets tended to and they get better outfitted in Val Foret. Shokrakar wants to see how they integrate with a company of more seasoned mercenaries, and after a day of rest, sends them out on another bounty job with Kaariss in charge.

She says that if they can stand to listen to Kaariss and actually _listen_ to him, then they’ll be cut out for our kith.

* * *

I’m with the group left behind - allowing more time for rest until we find either suitable smaller jobs, or another large one. Shokrakar and Taarlok are off settling our pay for our last job - it _was_ a pretty big reward, but there was only one wyvern - driven mad with illness and killing everything that came into its path. They’re worried they’ll shortchange us, and we’ll be out a significant chunk of change for the supplies we’d spent and time.

Before he’d gone, Taarlok left a sheaf of papers with me - an extension on my contract. 

I’ve been here for six months already.

That’s crazy.

* * *

Katoh decides to host a girl’s night - she invites me and Sataa, and two others I’m not really familiar with. They go by Velvet and Hunterhorn. They’re friends, barely out of their teens, and had liked the idea of choosing their own names, ones that aren’t Qunlat.

Katoh really likes southern culture, having spent a lot of time in Nevarra and Orlais, and laments that she hasn’t hosted a night like this in awhile.

Sataa tells me she’s never gone to one of Katoh’s parties before, but that she agrees to go only because I’d asked. 

I’m surprised it’s fun; more fun than I’ve had in what feels like a lifetime.

Katoh plies us all with wine and breaks out the vitaar and various odds and ends. The Qunari paint vitaar on each other, and then take turns decorating each other’s hair while swapping stories - most of which involve something either bloody or embarrassing. 

And drinking. There’s a lot of drinking.

It’s nothing like any girl’s night I’ve ever gone to before, but there’s some elements that feel the same - the wine, the company, the good humor, and friendship.

Split ends get cut, braids get replaited, and beads get woven into intricate up-dos. Katoh combs concentrated beetroot extract into her white hair to dye it a streaky pink. Then she stares at my hair, and the grown in roots with a frown. I know my hair is a mess; I haven’t had a trim since before I came here, and you can only really afford the barest minimum of a hair care routine as a travelling mercenary. Plus, it hasn’t really been a priority of mine. I _attempt_ to keep it tidy and tied back, and that’s all I can really do.

“What did you use in the bottom of your hair?”

I shrug. “Dye.” I don’t think they have anything like hair dye here. Well, other than the things Katoh uses to color her hair.

“It needs fixed,” she says with a pained frown.

“She can use vitaar. Not the entire mixture, but the base paste. It should color dark hair,” Sataa says. She’s staring at my hair too, and I know it’s an unruly mess. Wavy, frizzy, curly in spots, and everything else.

Vitaar is poisonous, I know that much, but once the paint flecks off it leaves behind a stain on the skin that lasts for weeks. “Would that be safe?” I ask a tad uneasily.

Sataa nods. “The base is a bean paste.” She squeezes my shoulder, “I would not see you poisoned.” 

They bicker a bit amongst themselves, but they seem to settle on the black bean paste being the most likely to work. I don’t really seem to have a say. 

Velvet asks me why I don’t decorate my hair, and why I keep it in such poor condition. After they admonish me, she offers to cut my hair.

By the end of the whole thing, I’m probably just past tipsy, and I end up with hair dyed a jet black, the sides of my head shaved a bit and the middle left long. She plaits a small braid near the base of the floppy mohawk and strings a bit of blue ribbon through it. She ties a bead in at the end.

You can tell a Qunari did my hair, but I look… badass. But that might be the wine talking. It’s like nothing that I’ve done before.

I probably make a fool out of myself thanking them, but I offer to do their nails in return.

Hair is one thing, but they all seem to think my attempts at manicures are both amusing and unnecessary. 

“We have warrior’s hands,” Sataa explains.

I give up after a bit, and just sit basking in the company and listening to Velvet and Hunterhorn call each other names while debating what facts are true in a story they’re both telling about a bunch of Antivan pirates they’d apparently met a while back.

I had tried massaging Sataa’s hands at one point, and I only notice that I’m still holding one when I startle reflexively when Hunterhorn punches Velvet in the arm for elaborating too much.

* * *

Sataa stops me just inside the room we’re sharing when Katoh shoos us from her room claiming a headache and a need to sleep sometime late into the night, possibly just about morning.

“I had objected when Adaar had wanted you to join us,” and my brain’s too muddled by wine and exhaustion to figure out what she means - what that expression is on her face. “I am glad I was proved wrong.”

She grasps one of my hands in hers, the palm face up. My hand looks so small and pale compared to hers - she really does have a warrior’s hands. Long-fingered, strong, calloused, and warm. She’s missing a bit from the end of her pinky, and her nails are short to the wick. Her skin’s the color of wrought iron and she has metal bands the same shade adorning her many, thick horns.

She presses something into my palm, closing my fingers around the small thing. When I withdraw my hand, I think at first it’s a rock and a bit of twine, but as I hold it up in the soft light from the rising sun, I see that it’s a small tooth of some kind suspended as a necklace, flat but rough on one side.

I suddenly feel my heart jump and my breath catches in my throat. This _means_ something, doesn’t it? 

“It is from the wyvern,” she tells me. I _still_ can’t read her expression and desperately wish for clarity. “I had landed the killing blow.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but brushes past me to toe off her boots and lay in her bed. I scramble in my memories for _what this means_ , but all I come up with is the knowledge that this is probably important, and a desperation for more information. 

Looking at the tooth, I slip the necklace around my neck. I tell her thank you, and go to lay in my bed. She smiles.

* * *

“Where’d you get that?” Adaar asks me with a gleam in his eyes and a smile stretching his face wide next time I see him. He’s looking at the necklace, the tooth sitting at the exposed base of my throat.

I left it on when I woke from my hangover. Clarity of mind and wracking my memories further from a time that feels like another life altogether, I have… _suspicions._ I can’t tell if my ideas are hopeful, foolish, frightened, or what. But Sataa hasn’t treated me any different, and the tooth isn’t a _dragon’s_ , but it is close; I don’t know if it makes a difference. It’s been two days since then, and nothing is any clearer. 

If there’s one thing I remember about teeth and Qunari, it’s that the exchange of dragon’s teeth is important. Are wyverns considered dragons?

“Sataa gave it to me,” I slide my fingers against the dull edge of the tooth.

His smile turns into a grin - it looks a little _too_ gleeful. “Oh, really?” He asks with a suspicious air about him. 

“Yes, really,” I huff at him, nerves playing at me. 

His face clears a moment later. “Hm. Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I saw her wearing one.”

“Is she supposed to?” Now I’m definitely nervous.

He clears his throat, looking a bit shifty. “Has she, uh… never mind.”

“What?”

He just shakes his head and refuses to say anything else, the brat.

* * *

It takes me another two days, but we’re set to break up into smaller companies to complete a list of jobs Shokrakar had compiled, and I’m not likely to get another chance for at least a couple weeks.

Sataa still trains with me on the physical aspects of staff-wielding, and before the wyvern job, had started branching off into teaching me basic hand-to-hand. The truth of it is, I’d make a piss-poor mercenary if it weren’t for the magic; I’d probably be dead, actually. 

It’s during one of these sessions that I put a voice to my thoughts.

“Sataa.” She is striking. She favors white vitaar, and beneath that, her body speaks of a hard life. Many scars adorn her face, and her four horns - two smaller close to the sides of her head, and two arching above - are nicked and gashed in places. I finally notice the color of her eyes; they’re a dark silver.

I place my fingers atop the necklace, her eyes are drawn there, “Do you have one too?”

She meets my gaze. “I do not wear it.”

“Why?”

She shakes her head. “It is not time for me to.”

* * *

The job does not go well.

I forget, for a time, all about wyvern teeth and understanding Sataa’s gift.

I was with a group sent to flush out a gang from the Alienage. There was a Chevalier fronting it. I draw his attention, but not intentionally - I was the only mage in our company, and that singles me out.

He made it his mission to silence me, and he almost succeeded. He had magebane on his blade.

If Meraad didn’t step in - I would have been dead. As it is, Meraad was hurt. I was hurt. It did not go well for many of us.

They pull me from the streets unconscious, bleeding, and mangled.

I don’t know how long it takes for me to regain consciousness. I don’t ask.

* * *

When my body heals - aided by my magic when I have the nerve - I have scars of my own borne of these injuries, testaments to the life I now live. A wakeup call unlike any I’ve had before. 

I was foolish. Naive.

I have seen death, even participated in its coming, with the Valo-Kas, and it shook me. But now, I’ve been on death’s doorstep, and it has upset everything.

Shokrakar gifts me more spellbooks. I train, I study, and it’s all I can do now.

It’s either that, or mourn for something I can never have again - simplicity and safety afforded to me by my comfortable, modern life I had once possessed. 

Safety is something I took for granted. Laws, police, basic civility…

* * *

Sataa often sits beside me when I don’t want to go to bed. 

Sometimes she lulls me to sleep.

* * *

Shokrakar promotes Adaar one day. He’s to lead his own small companies, negotiate with nobles and paying customers, and experience trials of leadership. He learns diplomacy, strategy, gains insight into noble’s Games, and law - both written and unspoken. I’m thankful I do not have such lessons.

He shadows Shokrakar, and I can see what will shape the man who will one day become the Inquisitor.

* * *

“Sataa.” She looks at me and I do not doubt that she sees past the purple bruises of sleepless nights, of hair thinned and stringy from stress, of chapped lips encrusted with dried blood, and the scar of the sword that had glanced across the side of my shorn head - cutting my ear and forever gracing me with echos of slicing pain and migraines from the damaged bone. 

She sees _me_ , and I, now, see her.

“Kadan,” I correct, and her gaze is rapt. I wrap a hand around the tooth sitting on the necklace at the base of my throat, and say, “I think you should wear yours.”

* * *

I learn many things about Sataa.

Under the Qun, she was a cartographer. Her sketches are amazing and beautiful. She keeps a sketchbook in her pack of things she sees and doodles in bits of charcoal and ink. She lets me look through it one night, and amongst breathtaking scenes of landscape and candid doodles of the Valo-Kas, I see myself amongst the pages. What I see there, makes tears come to my eyes. I don’t have the right words for what those images inspire.

Under the Qun, and while not traveling, she lived in a settlement in Rivain. Sometimes the evidence of her life in Rivain influences her speech. It’s cute.

She became Tal Vashoth in Rivian, and she won’t say much beyond that; she doesn’t have to. I don’t need to know about her past to care about her now. In return, she doesn’t press me when I’m vague about where I’m from or who I was before I became a victim of blood magic. I suspect she’s thought up some story of me being an apostate in hiding in the wilderness, or an escaped Circle mage, due to my lack of knowledge about many things. I don’t correct these suspicions. 

She likes her hair brushed and braided, and she especially likes it when I run my fingers through the pale lengths, fingers brushing against her horns. Casual touches aren’t something that I’ve found terribly easy, but they come naturally with her. I end up holding her hand or brushing a kiss against her cheek thoughtlessly. This is simultaneously strange and wonderful. It seems we’re both touch-starved, and we both cherish these small moments.

She’s wise. She’s had life experiences - becoming a warrior from nothing and navigating her life all the way to Orlais on her own before joining the Valo-Kas - that I can only begin to understand. Sometimes the imagery she uses, or the language she prefers, can be difficult to understand at first, but her advice is sound. She helped me navigate through the trauma of my near-death experience, and find my footing again.

She’s strong - both physically and mentally. I was forced into leaving my former life behind, but she chose to. I can’t imagine what that took. 

I admire her. But, maybe that’s not a strong enough word. I care for her, worry about her, and appreciate her presence in my life like nothing else - and it’s that knowledge that drove me to ask her to wear her necklace and call her Kadan. Is it love? I’ve known puppy love - brief and messy and heartbreaking - but not the kind of love that’s lasting. But that’s what she feels for me, isn’t it? What _is_ love?

* * *

I gradually wake up from sleep to the feeling of blunt fingers dragging through the soft, short hair above my ear. My skin tingles, and the sensations fizz all along my spine. Warmth suffuses me, and I blink open gritty eyes to see Sataa awake and leaning towards me. 

Sleep is still difficult, but with Sataa acting as a living furnace and using the weight of her heavy arms to keep me grounded during nightmares, I’ve been able to get more rest than I would otherwise. Sataa sleeps well, but lightly. When my body starts to move about in the grips of a night terror, she wakes, and settles me. I always feel regret - I _move_ so much when I sleep and I _always_ dream; it’s so much worse here - but she won’t hear it; she understands. 

Thinking about that, in the face of her tender expression and warm eyes, I shuffle forward until my face is pressed against the swell of her chest, hiding my own expression of regret and shame. 

Her fingers slip through the strip of my death-hawk, until the palm of her hand is cupping the back of my head. She sighs, and I can feel her warm breath against my skin. I know she’s frustrated with me; it’s always the same.

Part of me wants to apologize, but I know that’ll start an argument, so I keep my lips pressed together and burrow further into her yielding warmth. Her thighs are all hard muscle, and I tuck my feet under one while slipping a hand against her ribcage, feeling the rise and fall of her breath.

She brings her free arm around me, pulling me in closer with the width of her large hand against my back. I can feel the differences in pressure where her fingertips are mangled or missing. It makes me sad, to think of all that she’s been through. And here I am, adding to her troubles. 

She’s not wearing vitaar - she often goes without, now - and drops her head onto the pillow with a small huff. 

“You are thinking too much. Again,” she says a touch irritably. She’s not without faults, either. She can’t help poking. “You should stop.”

“Easier said than done,” I snap, pulling against her hold, but her hands are frustratingly steady. “Let me go.”

Her hands go lax, and I pull away from her warmth, missing it but pushing that desire aside. She looks vulnerable, sad, and pissy all at once. Her horns are pressed into the pillow - the morning sun glinting off the metal bands there - and her hair is a mess around her. She’s too much and too awake for this godforsaken hour. 

I move without thinking really, and she’s still while I reach out and trace my fingertips lightly against the myriad of scars adorning her face.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe, and her face crumples. “Did you sleep?”

“Enough,” she assures me. Part of me wants to argue, but she uses my hesitation to bring my hand to her lips, kissing my palm. 

My chest aches; is that love?

* * *

The first mission I’m assigned with Adaar in charge is to flush out a group of bandits.

It goes well. Minimal injuries and the bandits were driven from their stronghold. I’m _surprised_.

Adaar is good at this.

* * *

Sataa was not with us for that mission, and when we return there’s still a Sataa-sized hole beside me. I find out she’s on another mission, being part of an accompaniment to a noble’s guard in a bid to come off as _impressive_ to his peers during a party of some kind. Or something like that; that’s what I gleaned from Shokrakar’s curses and grumbling about Orlesians and decorations, anyway.

But the physical affection, the cuddling… I’ve become accustomed to it. I _like_ it. 

After a particularly bad night, Sataa had suggested sharing a bed. She had admitted that she did not think to _sleep_ with her Kadan, but that she would do what she could to make things easier for me. Qunari views on relationships - ones that Sataa grew up with and have come to expect - combined with my own unique views, makes for navigating certain things… difficult.

I constantly feel like I’m too much of a burden, and she constantly _helps_ , then I feel like I’m taking advantage.

After learning that she likes the attention, the touches, the cuddles, I try to pepper her with them in a bid to make our exchanges more… fair, I guess. They’ve become second nature - innocent. I’ve grown used to the casual affections as much as she has. 

Whenever we’re apart, it brings all of that back into focus. 

And I, subsequently, feel like crap.

* * *

I’m left to my own devices, and I wander a marketplace… just letting my mind run wild. It’s easy to forget things when you’re constantly on the move doing jobs and traveling… I forget how much _time_ has passed; it goes so fast, and you never really learn that until you’re in a situation where you’re taken out of your element and forced to reflect, or you come to a point in your life where you wish, freverently, for time to stand still. Also, depression and insomnia sort of suck up time and memories like a vortex. It’s hard to recall what the fuck you did when you’re operating on an average of four hours of fitful sleep a night.

I’ve… been here a long time. I’ve been here for… a year? Year and a half? Unfamiliar holidays have come and gone, and… and the memories of home aren’t that clear anymore. 

It’s been so long… but in all this time I’ve never really tried to understand how I’ve come to be here. And yet, here I am, and here it seems I’ll be. Maybe it’s not important.

Lost in thoughts as I am, I don’t notice until a throat clears, loudly, that I’m standing in front of a traveling merchant’s stall.

A book catches my eye, and it takes me a moment to translate the title (reading is still sometimes slow to come, especially when I’m overtired). It’s a used copy of _Hard In Hightown_.

I buy it, and I don’t even attempt to haggle (not that I even like having to haggle anyway).

_Hard In Hightown_. It looks like it’s the first in the series. If this exists, this means that Hawke is in Kirkwall. 

* * *

“Sataa?”

“Yes, Kadan?”

“Will you go with me?”

She seem startled, confused, perhaps. “Go where?”

“To Kirkwall.”

It takes her a moment, but she shakes her head, the sun glinting off her horns and her expression sour. “No.”

“Why not?” I wasn’t expecting her to say _no_.

“The Arishok is there, and I will not go to a city crawling with Qunari.” She looks pensive, her eyes narrowing at me. “Why do you wish to go to Kirkwall?”

I read the book while she was gone, and it seems stupid, but I can feel the weight of it in my pack, weighing both on my body and mind. “I… had wanted to meet the author, Varric Tethras.”

Her lips quirk, and I wonder what she’s thinking. “Hm. I should see what has made you want to journey so far. Perhaps you can read this author’s work to me.”

* * *

Shokrakar makes a headquarters for our company in Jader.

It seems she was saving for such a purchase for literal years. Human owners charge outrageous prices to non-humans, and it took her, with Taarlok’s help, quite some time to put aside enough of the profits and find a suitable building to convert once the idea was conceived. 

I was present for the negotiations and handing over of deeds. They thought the Orlesian noble they were dealing with might be more amenable if another human was present. It was odd; I sort of just stood there.

The property’s a gigantic warehouse and its grounds on the edge of the Orlesian territory - it being so close to Ferelden that it’s seen as undesirable by most potential Orlesian buyers - near the edge of the Waking Sea. 

Shokrakar had to petition the Orlesian government for lots of things, at least, that’s the impression I was given, in order to even purchase property. 

Lots of people were against Tal-Vashoth owning property, but it happened. I think she’s the first in Orlesian history.

Our company moves in after the purchase, but it takes time to renovate. We’re all eager to help, though, and with contractors - who are carefully watched - proper living spaces crop up, an armory emerges, a kitchen, training areas, rec areas, books creep in, decks of cards and dice, as do bits and pieces needed to brew potions and make salves. 

It’s like living in a dorm. One full of Tal-Vashoth.

* * *

It’s comfortable, living in the headquarters. 

Shokrakar sends out rotating companies on jobs with a more concrete schedule - it’s posted in the rec area and everything - and we even take in a couple more recruits. They’re a pair of Vashoth, like Adaar, a brother and a sister. Their parents had settled near the border of the Hissing Wastes - scavenging and trading trinkets, hides, scales, and teeth amongst other things. They had a rough upbringing, and Shokrakar says they have promise.

Adaar says they remind him of himself at that age - just leaving home and wanting to strike out on his own, full of hope and dreams. I laugh and tell Adaar that he’s still like that, but he doesn’t exactly agree. He’s still very much an optimist though, for someone who’s gone through as much as he has.

They have Orlesian names - Arnaud and Brigitte - and their family name means ‘hart’. Adaar obviously feels a connection with them, and he seems to take them under his wing.

But… they have two names, like Adaar (his name is _Willow_ Adaar, because willow aren’t native to Seheron), and I know a few of the veterans have chosen two names for themselves, too, but… I don’t think Sataa has chosen a surname for herself. Adaar, Arnaud, and Brigitte didn’t choose their names - their parents picked the family name and then bestowed first names after birth - just like most non-Qunari. But Sataa is just Sataa.

This bothers me.

* * *

It’s one of the nights I can’t sleep, mind turning round and round with ceaseless thoughts. We’re curled together in our bed, in one of the long rooms converted into sleeping quarters. The quarters are sectioned off with bookcases and plywood walls, curtains for doors or heavy tapestries. It’s a bit haphazard, but comfortable, warm. You can hear the edge of muted conversations and the light is dim, coming from cracks and crevices in every direction.

One of Sataa’s hands is curled around my ribcage, and her breath is fanning wayward wisps of hair against my forehead. One of my hands is tucked up against her chest, and the fingers of my other hand are drawing restless designs against the skin of her bicep. I can tell she’s not asleep yet, though.

“Have you ever chosen a surname for yourself?”

“I chose my name, its meaning is ‘world’.” 

“No, like… your last name. I have three names: a first, middle, and last name. The last name is your surname, or family name. Like Adaar’s. His parents chose a name for their family.”

She seems to mull this over for a moment. “Is this important? Can I not just be Sataa?”

“You can,” I’m quick to assure. “I was just… wondering.”

* * *

“Celestine,” Sataa tells me suddenly some time later. We’re both preparing for jobs - different; mine acting as human liaison on contract negotiations with some nobles (I’m not expected to do anything more than make the humans feel more comfortable, and hopefully my presence will be enough), and hers is a job to secure stolen cargo. 

“What?” I ask automatically, blinking stupidly.

“Celestine,” she enunciates. “If I were to choose a name for my family, it would be Celestine.”

Something clenches in my chest at that. “Oh, Sataa. Is that because-” Lake Celestine - my favorite place in all of Orlais, if not Thedas. It’s where I had asked her to wear her tooth, standing beside those waters. Does that place speak to her, too? Does it mean so much, because of me? The thought is overwhelming, and… and…

She interrupts my thoughts by wrapping her big hands around my own, and I stare up at her with open emotion churning in my expression. “Know that I count you as my family, Kadan.”

* * *

Qunari don’t have family, not like how I know family.

They build their families and aren’t given them.

These thoughts in mind, I seek out Adaar from where we’re camped on our return trip to Jader. Four of us were sent for negotiations, and Adaar and I are sharing a tent while we aren’t staying at inns. 

“Adaar, I… have some questions,” I start awkwardly.

“Shoot,” he tells me with a hint of a smile.

“Are you Andrastian?”

He scratches at one of his horns, perhaps a bit confused as to why I’m asking. “Sorta? Mother and Father were married at a Chantry, but that was mostly so Mother and I could qualify for assistance if something happened to him; he’s in the town’s militia, and the mayor has this system... And… I went to service a few times,” this last bit is muttered with a hint of a blush on his cheeks. 

I narrow my eyes at him. “Trying to impress someone?”

He coughs, “You can say that. Why the sudden interest? Are you Andrastian?”

“No,” I shake my head. “I was actually wondering about marriage customs. I’m not sure what the Andrastian customs are - or any around here, really. Do people only use Andrastian customs around here?”

“Marriage?” His smile is a tad frightening. Oh, God. “Finally making an honest woman out of Sataa, huh?”

I huff a breath, unable to find the words, my mouth hanging open. 

He takes mercy on me, his expression softening. “Orlesians are _very_ Andrastian,” he says. “If you wanted something beyond the Qunari custom,” he jerks his chin with a pointed look at my necklace, “it would have to be blessed by a Mother. But you _do_ know the Qunari custom is binding, right? It’s not the same as marriage - it’s more like, er, less a contract, and more… spiritual.”

* * *

I love Sataa.

* * *

This realization comes to me when we’re stopped by Templars on our way to Jader. Most people are initially suspicious, if not outright hostile, to my companymen. They are clearly harassing us, and I _know_ I can’t appear weak; I can’t let them be suspicious. My _life_ depends on this.

“What about you there?” Their attention is drawn to me once they’re sick of Kaariss. “A human in a group with a bunch of ox-men. Seems a bit peculiar.”

“I am a dwarf, Ser.” I can pass for a dwarf; I’ve done it in the past. I also can’t talk too much, not that I want to talk to these men, anyway.

“Oh _really_? What’s your name then?”

“Bianca Tethras,” I don’t hesitate, drawing on memory. They can inquire about Tethras, see that it’s a real dwarven family. And I know Bianca is a dwarven name.

One snorts, his look is nasty. “ _Tethras_? Like the author? What do you take me for?”

Oh, shit. Maybe I should’ve picked a different dwarven name. I scramble, “The author’s my cousin, Ser.”

“Oh, hey, that coat looks familiar,” another says. “Looks like them mage robes.”

One grabs my arm roughly, nearly hauling me off my feet despite my companions’ protests. “You _are_ a mage, aren’t ya? Get the irons!”

Shit breaks loose.

One tries to smite me when the others charge. At least… I think that’s what he did. It _hurts_. There’s lancing pain throughout my entire body, whiting out my vision and sending me to the ground while my veins _burn_.

It’s excruciating; my body is trembling while an icy fire licks at my veins, numbing my fingers and causing black spots to dance in my vision. My head swims, fog clouding my thoughts, and my limbs too weak to move. 

I see bits and pieces of the battle. Only some of it registers through my anguish. 

Later, Adaar tells me they killed the Templars, burnt their bodies, and cast them into the Waking Sea. 

Ashaad condemns Kaariss and Adaar, tells them there is a reason mages are Saarebas, and why there should be none in the Valo-Kas. 

I think of Sataa, and what would have happened had I died. How she doesn’t treat me like a ‘dangerous thing’, how she sees me as a person despite how she was raised, how she would have reacted just like Kaariss and Adaar. How my death would have hurt her, and the pain I feel at thinking of that. 

In those moments I was afraid for myself, yes, but I was also afraid for _her_. 

I realize that I have this fear, because I love her. If I did not love her, it would not hurt this bad to think of such things.

* * *

We both have tears in our eyes when I tell her what happened.

I am weak and frightened, and she is shaken over what almost happened.

“I love you,” I tell her, my hand on her face, and tears slip past her eyelashes. 

She touches my hand. “And I love you.”


	2. Part 2

Word travels across the land that the Arishok is dead. 

The Valo-Kas throw something of a party. Well, some do - others seem to be contemplative and quiet while the base breaks out in an uproar of drink and song.

Sataa and I are some of those quiet ones. While others celebrate the death of someone who was a leader in the oppressive society that they had fled from, Sataa tells me that his death means little. There will be a new Arishok, the soldiers that were lost at Kirkwall will be replaced, and very little will have changed overall. The Qun has not been dealt a blow, but rather a temporary inconvenience. 

I think about what this means. If events follow what I remember, then in three years time the Kirkwall Chantry will be destroyed and the Circles will start to fall.

Even though the Arishok is dead, and Sataa’s main protest for going to Kirkwall is gone, I do not think we should go. It would not be safe to be an apostate in that city, now. Meredith’s madness will have started to flourish in earnest by now.

And what could I do, if I go?

Nothing, really. I believe my fate is here, not in Kirkwall.

* * *

  
  


Sataa’s blood is cooling on my hands, slick against my skin and soaking the cream-colored ends of my sleeves a stark red. 

We’re hunting blood mages in the Frostbacks. At first, we didn’t think they were really blood mages - just rumored possible-apostates stealing from caravans under the cover of darkness. The promised payout was good, and so Shokrakar sent out a company to route them out for the bounty.

They’re blood mages, and they bled Sataa. 

Tears are stinging my eyes, but through the burn I focus on putting every ounce of healing energy that I can conjure into her wounds. The sounds of our comrades engaging the group of blood mages becomes a distant roar while my focus is drawn entirely on saving her life. I sense the presence of wisps gathering around me - their tiny sparks of energy pouring into my magic while they circle us. Her wounds, finally, close and the last dredges of dark magic is drawn from her being by the wisps, who greedily feed on the energies. 

She’s breathing. Unconscious, but _alive_.

An anger unlike anything I’ve ever felt before starts to well up within me, and I turn to stand on shaky legs, Sataa’s healed body prone on the ground behind me, to look upon the battle. There are at least a half-dozen mages still alive, two dead on the snow-dusted earth, their blood grotesquely fuelling their comrades’ spells. 

I draw my staff forward, and send forth an abysmal wave of coiling energy behind the enemy’s line, pulling them back forcefully away from the other Valo-Kas.

“Stand back!” I yell, and only a few of my fellow mercenaries listen. I step forward, and my concentration is on the mages. Glittering wisps now circle me in earnest. A rush of energy floods my veins, and I yell as loud as I can, “Fall back! Now!”

The sensation of _magic_ flowing through my body, weaving itself as my mind directs, coiling into purpose at the font of power that is my staff, is all still so foreign and strange. It’s unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life, before. 

The mages are now more-or-less grouped at the center of the abysmal energy, snaring them in its chaotic force and inhibiting their movements, preventing them from casting effectively. 

I _reach_ out with my power, fueled by the wisps that’ve taken to me, and I _slam_ them into the ground, drawing my free hand into a fist the same moment that I direct all my assembled energies into crushing the life out of them.

They can’t even draw breath to scream.

Most outright die from the spell, but those that survive are quickly cut down by Valo-Kas. 

In all my time as a mercenary, these are the first people that I’ve single-handedly killed. I feel sick and shaky at the realization, and the expenditure of so much of my energy. Seemingly disinterested in the lack of casting and my drained reserves of mana, the wisps start to leave me. I turn back to Sataa lying prone on the hard-packed earth, to find her still unconscious, but still drawing breath through her parted blue-tinged lips.

She’s alive, and they would have killed her - and gladly killed us all. I should not feel sorry for stopping them before they could. 

And, yet.

* * *

I am not a spirit healer, and even though I healed Sataa to the best of my abilities, she still has much to recover from. Blood magic is hard on the body, and she suffered from many magically-induced lacerations and significant blood loss. She remains unconscious throughout the return journey to Jader, body wrapped in blankets and laid on her bedroll in an uncovered cart. We had split into two groups - one to collect the reward, and the other to escort Sataa and the other injured members of our kith back to base immediately. None of the other injuries were as bad as Sataa’s. 

She regains consciousness briefly on the third day, and Kaariss and I manage to get a bit of elfroot tea and a small drought of a restoration potion in her before she starts to flag and succumb to unconsciousness again. 

I feel sick, watching her suffer. My stomach protests at the sight of food, and I can’t sleep for more than an hour or two before waking, and having to check on her. I am constantly shaking and crying, and I can’t _do_ this; I don’t want to be somewhere where this misery is a reality - where this kind of suffering and loss is common enough that everyone accepts it with a kind of grim resignation. 

This is _normal_. 

What kind of hell is this, that this is normal?

I can’t lose the woman that I love; I don’t know what that would do to my soul, but I don’t want to find out.

* * *

I want to leave the Valo-Kas, but I cannot.

This world is horrible - barbaric and just... awful. 

I haven’t many choices, and I know Sataa would not leave.

It takes a great deal of sorting myself out, but I too succumb to the very same grim resignation that everyone else seem to have regarding this brutality and savage way of life.

* * *

I nurse Sataa back to health - using magic and elfroot and good food and rest - and the others help where they can. I’m surprised by all the support, but maybe I shouldn’t be. The Valo-Kas is something of a family.

Sataa isn’t herself, in the days of her recovery. Perhaps she’ll be changed in some way now. This isn’t an experience to take lightly, after all, and I too know what it’s like to believe you’re going to die. I’ve gleaned that she’s experienced it before, though she doesn’t speak about it, but I know firsthand each time is unique and horrible.

While Sataa is bedridden, we get a visitor at our base - another Ashaad seeking refuge and work. Shokrakar takes him on after speaking with him some. I’m in the common room finding a new book for Sataa to read when I overhear some of the others saying that Ashaad Two came from Kirkwall. They’re suspicious of him, thinking him a spy of the late Arishok’s. 

It’s later that week that I come back from the market with a basketfull of fresh berries and a couple new books for Sataa to find her sitting in the common room chatting to Ashaad Two.

Later, she tells me about him - how he’s still reeling and struggling to accept that he’s truly Tal Vashoth, how he’s still suffering from losing his kadan in Kirkwall, a human man named Saemus. 

This brings everything back into focus, but I still don’t tell her what I’ve been thinking of since her injury - how I’m struggling to cope with this life, how I worry for her, for _us_ , and everything else.

* * *

“Shanedan, Saarebas,” I greet with a little bow that feels stilted and unnatural. I haven’t spent much time with my fellow mage, though we live at the same base as everyone else, but, admittedly, are rarely sent on jobs together. 

He is still quiet and withdrawn, however he seems to have loosened up some since joining us.

“I’m not used to being addressed like that,” he admits with something like a wry smile pulling at his scarred lips. He is reading a heavy book, one that I recognize as a spellbook of some kind even from the distance I’m standing at. 

“What? ‘Shanedan’?” I ask confused - that _is_ the proper qunlat greeting. “Or ‘Saarebas’?”

“Both,” he shakes his head.

I take a moment to digest this - how he’s unused to something equivalent to a _hello_ and at the other admission. “I’m sorry, but… have you chosen a name for yourself?”

“Blade,” he says, and this makes me smile. He can’t know the connections I draw to the name, but… it’s fitting.

“Hello, Blade,” I say with a genuine smile. 

For a moment his lips quirk, and then he settles back into his chair. “Did you need something?”

“I-” Now that I’m here, it almost seems silly, to ask this perfect stranger something like this. “I was wondering if you knew how- knew the best way to defend against blood magic.”

It seemed like a good idea; he’s the more experienced mage, raised from a young age to fight against Tevinter soldiers. And now I have the image of Qunari children having their mouths sewn shut and collars locked around their necks -scared, alone, and chained. It makes me frown, my brows pulling together, as I look at Blade and feel a wave of emotion hit me. 

What he must’ve gone through…

“Ah,” he looks at me, assessing. Everyone knows what happened to Sataa. “Let’s make an exchange of knowledge,” my ears prick at that. “I am curious as to how you draw energy from wisps.”

* * *

I learn, and I go to Sataa to tell her. 

“I can protect you now,” I tell her, hand holding onto hers tightly. We’re outside, enjoying the breeze and eating a light supper. She’s doing better, and I’m to be sent on another job soon.

“That was never in question, Kadan,” she looks at me, and I can still see a frailness in her expression. “I… I know you do not care for dealing in death, and I heard… I have heard what you did.”

“I don’t-” I look away from her, a strange mix of guilt, shame, and sadness overtaking me. “I have never really thought death was necessary,” I say slowly, and I take a long breath. “But I wanted to kill them for what they did to you, and I-” my breath chokes but I struggle on, remembering how close to death Sataa was. “I don’t regret that. I regret that it had to happen, but I- I would do it again.” I look to her, and she’s still gazing at me. “I would protect you.”

She laces our fingers together. “I would do the same for you.” She’s quiet for a moment, before she sets aside her plate and turns towards me. “Do you think, in time, that you would you leave the Valo-Kas?”

“I can’t,” I say quietly. “I couldn’t leave you, and… But, maybe someday…? Would you- would you like to settle down somewhere together, if it were safe?”

Her expression is tender, and she rubs her thumb against my knuckles. “Perhaps, but you should know that there are not many options for Tal-Vashoth,” she says with a smile to take the sting out of her words.

She didn’t say no, though. “Maybe we could work in a village’s militia, like Adaar’s father, or a city guard, somewhere.”

“You?” She quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe just you,” I amend shyly. “Maybe I could have a clinic, like I used to, or something,” I say a little brighter, helpless to imagine a future with her, even though I know better than most how bleak it could very well be. 

“You had a clinic?” And she looks curious now. 

I look away from her, still hesitant to bring up my past, let alone explain most of it, where I’m even _from_. “I had worked at one and helped manage it, before… before.” I’m quiet for a moment while I think of that, of that life that seems so, so distant.

She squeezes my hand, tugging on it a bit until I face her again. “We will find our future together, Kadan.”

* * *

That night, I’m restless - struggling with thoughts of both the past and possible future.

“Kadan,” I whisper into her hair, one hand brushing through the pale teresses. She likes the endearment, and I like how she responds to it, even though it necessarily wouldn’t be my endearment of choice. She presses a sleepy kiss into my arm, and I squirm away a little, a seriousness entering my tone. “I think I know why that blood mage had me. The one… the one that was that nobleman’s son.” She’s quiet and still, but I can tell by her breaths that she’s still awake. “I have seen bits and pieces of the future. I know… I know some of what will happen.”

She pulls away from me, her silvery eyes glowing in the muted light around us in our room. Her voice is barely a whisper when she says, “You are a seer.”

It’s not a question, but I nod; it’s the closest explanation to why I know what I do. “I knew that the Qunari would attack Kirkwall, and that Hawke would kill the Arishok. It’s… it’s one of the reasons I had wanted to go to Kirkwall. To… I don’t know. Warn people.” I bow my head. “Even if I did, who would listen?”

The pads of her fingers touch my cheek. “I would.”

So I tell her.

* * *

Sataa tells me that the woman who had sheltered her in Rivain as a newly-fledged Tal Vashoth, was a seer. Ayanna, the seer, had helped Sataa find her purpose and had eventually told her to go to Orlais and live her life. 

She also told her that her lover would be a small, strange human.

This is the first time that Sataa has said anything about that time in her life, and so, in turn, I tell her what I know of the future.

I know she is inclined to believe me due to Ayanna, and I feel guilt at her comparing me to that woman - I am not a seer like she knows Ayanna to be, but I also can’t tell her where I’m from or even begin to explain why I know what I do.

Can I?

I love Sataa and I hate having to keep my past from her like this, but I doubt she could understand if I tried; it’s difficult for me to figure out what happened anyway.

I try; the guilt is ratcheting higher the longer I stare at those wide, understanding, _trusting_ eyes.

“You can’t tell anyone what I told you. I- I haven’t told anyone but you,” I say softly. “I’m afraid… that if too many people know, or if the _wrong_ person finds out, that the future will change and I won’t know what’ll happen.”

“Would you not have another vision?” 

“I… no,” I pause for a long moment while I gather my thoughts, and my tentative resolve, into better explaining myself. “I’m not… I think people would tell me I’m a seer, but I’m not really one. I know what I know because I _saw_ it, but I didn’t have a vision.”

I pause and rub a hand through my hair, and she seems confused - her brows draw tight together while she leans closer towards me, so I try again.

“Where I’m from, this is normal,” video games don’t exist here. “I didn’t know it would be my future that I was seeing; and this is common, back where I’m from. We’re- I’m from a place far away from here. It’s… I’m pretty sure it’s beyond the Fade. Like… It’s another world altogether.” I drop my head in my hands, frustrated with myself from being unable to _explain_ clearly. “I don’t know if I’m making sense, but I don’t want to lie to you; where I’m from, it’s not Thedas. I don’t know how to explain,” I say desperately.

She touches my shoulder gently, and I look up towards her. Her expression is contemplative, but not disgusted or angry as I’d feared, and I feel myself hoping… “Are you human?”

“Yes,” I say, “I’m just from a different place. I don’t… I don’t know how I got here, but… it was something that blood mage did.”

She frowns, and I clutch at her hand, “I’m not making this up, and I’m not crazy. I know… I know it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t told _anyone_ , and I thought maybe- maybe you’d…”

“Believe you?” She quirks a brow. “Kadan, being a seer is one matter, but what you are claiming is difficult to fathom.”

She still called me ‘kadan’. “I’m not lying,” I say desperately. “I’m not sure how I got here, but if that mage brought me here… maybe there’s others like me here. I’m from Earth. Maybe someone wrote something about someone from Earth, somewhere. There _has_ to have been other people like me.”

Maybe she’s humoring me when she says, “Tell me of this place, Earth,” but I do anyway.

* * *

It takes some digging, and practically all my savings put into a sketchy black market dealer, but I buy a text mentioning Earth as a place, and not the ground or where the dwarves are from. 

It’s a retracted, unpublished chapter from one of Genitivi’s works on the dwarves:

_There are mentions of others of the Earth; not those descended from the Stone, but those that scant literature in the Shaperate depict, in my humble interpretation, to be almost Chasind in appearance and behavior. Nearly all are detailed to be of magical inclination, and most are slated to be ignorant, drowning in benighted superstition and peculiarity. They are odd humans mentioned as curiosities, otherwise not terribly notable in dwarven literatures. They have no House, nor are they Casteless, as their names and fates are detailed, though they have no dwarven heritage to speak of. How they came to be in Orzammar, as humans are not terribly welcome in these cavernous depths of secluded society, is a mystery. These humans have piqued my interest, but, unfortunately for those of us who find such curiosities and imaginings to be notable and worthy of understanding, there is little literature on them. Why, only five such humans in the whole of these literatures, as my research has uncovered, have similar mentions in the Shaperate, who classify such humans as little more than anomalies born of the Earth._

When I show Sataa the book, and she reads it, then re-reads it, hope wells up in my chest. We’d drifted apart after my confession, and I honestly feared that I’d lose her. The months leading up to when that dealer presented me with the book were some of the most heart-wrenching. I’d nearly lost Sataa to blood magic, and then I’d nearly driven her away all on my own.

“You are like these humans,” she says, eyes still glued to the book. “You have spoken of a God who is not the Maker, and, when you joined us, you did not know simple tasks such as lighting a fire or darning socks.” She looks up at me then. “I had thought that perhaps it was due to a sheltered life, but you are like them - you are from Earth.”

“Yes,” I say, tears welling in my eyes. “Do you believe me?”

* * *

It isn’t until the Chantry in Kirkwall explodes, and our little corner of Thedas gets word of it, that she believes what I’d told her would happen in the future.

* * *

She is frightened, but I see determination in her too.

“What do we do now?”

“Have Adaar’s back,” we both look towards our friend. “Everything’s riding on him.”

* * *

Life still goes on - Circles start fracturing, people riot, the pious are in an uproar, and mercenaries must still find work.

Sataa and I are sent on a mission together, which is not as frequent an occurrence as either of us would like. Shokrakar tends to be choosy about the jobs she sends those of us in close, personal relationships with on together; she views such entanglements as risky, though she’s never discouraged her kith from forming them. Arnaud and Brigitte are in the same boat due to being siblings, and Arnaud and Velvet are due to being a couple; though Velvet isn’t sent on jobs much these days, since she’s heavily pregnant and all. Shokrakar choses to do this due to the risk of distraction or favoritism, depending on the job. 

This job sounds straightforward enough, at least in Shokrakar’s opinion. I’m highly skeptical - well, honestly, worried. We’re to investigate possible darkspawn sightings down the coast in Ferelden territory. I know there are still darkspawn, and I _know_ there’s darkspawn on the coast. We’re to find enough proof to bring to the authorities in order to convince their men to divert their attentions from the increasingly restless population, and instead turn them onto the monsters. A worried landowner in these parts is offering a handsome sum in order for this to happen.

Shokrakar seemed amused when she said a couple darkspawn heads should be proof enough. 

I do not find this amusing, at all. The Blight sickness sounds like some alien-zombie-virus- _thing_ , and darkspawn sound worse than demons or maleficar, handsdown.

I think Sataa is a bit concerned for me when I repeat the same warnings to her for the nth time while we prep for the journey.

“Make sure they don’t bite or scratch you; their blood carries the Taint. Pretty sure their saliva would too, so be careful. Try to keep your distance, and don’t let any fluids splatter on your face - what would happen if it got in your eye?! Just-just be careful and stay close to everyone else; darkspawn kidnap women and turn them into-”

“Please, stop,” she sets a heavy hand on my shoulder and I blink up at her, worry still pinching my features. “Why do you have these concerns? Are there darkspawn where you are from?”

“No, no.” I pat her hand, and try to clear the fog of worry from my thoughts. “I-I learned some things from a few Grey Wardens, I guess. There’s… Just, anything to do with darkspawn is some horrific stuff.”

She looks worried now. “Should we not take this job? If it is too risky, we can-”

“I… don’t think we should do that.” Now my conscious and fear are batting back and forth. “The landowner has a right to worry, and if we can help convince the Bann to take things seriously? We can stop a lot of innocent people getting hurt. We just… we just need to be careful.”

* * *

Sataa brings my concerns to Shokrakar, who in turn approves Blade to join our squad, and Meraad. 

Now with two mages and another senior member of the company tagging along, I feel significantly better about our odds. Though, I’m still worried and sometimes verging on panic if I’m left to fret about it too much. But every time I think about convincing Shokrakar to drop the contract, or asking Adaar if I can stay behind on base, my conscious rears up, and I grudgingly trudge along. 

There are seven of us, which probably seems excessive to everyone but me for something like a recon job - two archers, including Adaar, three swordsmen, including Blade’s kadan - the newly-chosen-named Stormheart - and Sataa, and we two mages. I might feel better if we had another swordsman or two. 

Or, you know, half the Valo-Kas.

* * *

We find darkspawn, as expected, but also a woman.

She is wearing mage robes beneath a ratty cloak and apron, a light pack and staff on her back, and a baby wrapped up in her arms. She’s on a rocky outcropping near the pebbled shore, muttering feverish, unintelligible words under her breath, pacing, and dragging one foot slicked with blood and bent at an unnatural angle behind her.

The inky lines of Blight sickness stand in stark tendrils against her pale skin, and can be seen even from a distance.

“Oh my God.” I don’t think I’ve ever breathed those words with such fear before.

Blade draws a paralysis glyph while the lot of us seem to stop in indecision when faced with her.

Frozen, she _wails_ , and the sound is unnerving. The baby starts crying at the sound, muttering a heart wrenching _mamamama_ over and over.

The baby is alive. Please, don’t let the baby be hurt.

Sataa stands tall beside me, sword drawn and face taught beneath the think lines of vitaar. We circle the woman, and again it’s Blade who reaches out, pulling the baby from the mother’s immobilized grasp. 

He puts the bundle in my arms, ordering me to _‘check it over’_ as I stand there, fearful. Blade is not a healer, and I know what he wants me to do. I stumble back, gaze affixed to the woman’s bloodshot eyes, ichor-stained mouth still wrenched open loosing inhuman cries. 

I turn my back when Adaar orders, in a pained croak, for Blade to end the woman’s life as quickly and painlessly as possible; Blade is the better mercenary. We all know it is too late for the woman.

I stumble towards the nearest tree with the squirming, crying baby, kneeling in the dirt and setting the baby down with trembling hands. 

I unwrap them first - the gown the child is wearing is filthy, the diaper leaking with urine and feces. The child’s eyes are wide and blue, and their little face is blotchy red with their cries. 

When I look the child over, I don’t see any wounds. I run my hand through the short, black hairs on the crown of their head, take the gown and soiled diaper off, and only see some nasty looking diaper rash beneath the filth. 

It’s a girl, though. 

Her ears are very slightly tapered at the ends, and I figure her father must be an elf. While I examine her, my mind is running from thought to thought so quickly, and adrenaline is coursing through my veins. My trembling hands pet the baby’s downy hair, and I wonder if her father’s nearby; if he’s hurt too. 

I think judging by her size, and the fact that she’s part-elf, that she must be about a year or year-and-a-half old. I see a good few teeth in her mouth when she parts her lips to cry.

I call on my magic, then, placing my hand on her stomach and encouraging a bit of creation energies into her little body - both to soothe her empty stomach and heal the erosion on her bottom. A wisp circles overhead while I check her with my magic. 

Far as I can tell, she doesn’t have the Taint.

Relief pushes past the fear and sorrow, for a moment.

I didn’t notice when Sataa kneeled beside me, and I startle a bit when she asks, “Is she alright?”

“Yes,” my eyes are still trained on the baby, and I start to gather her in the marginally cleaner blanket she was wrapped in, holding her to my chest and rubbing her back in an effort to calm her. “She’s not hurt.”

Her mother protected her, at the cost of her life.

* * *

We don’t find any lost elven men, and we don’t see any corpses that fit what her father must look like. 

We head towards the Bann’s estate then. We had enough proof gathered before we stumbled across the woman and her child.

* * *

Sataa has the woman’s staff, and I took her pack - I found a few essentials for the baby in there. There’s just two bits of cloth for diapers, a thin gown, and some dried berries and flatbread soft enough for the baby to eat. Other than the mother’s spare clothes, comb, bedroll, and miscellaneous cooking tools, I find a ratty straw doll and a wrapped bundle of feathers in the pack. 

The baby clutches the doll, and I don’t know what the feathers could’ve been for.

“Perhaps they are trinkets, or for quills,” Sataa suggests in a quiet moment when I bring the curious find up to her.

We’re sitting near the campfire - we’ll be at the Bann’s estate the next day.

“There weren’t any men’s clothes in there either,” I tell her. She’s holding the baby, carefully giving her sips of water from her flask. I started to panic when I realized I didn’t know what the fuck to do without a sippy cup. “Do you think her father was traveling with them?”

She shrugs. “Adaar tells me the emblem on the staff is likely from Starkhaven. Perhaps he did not make the journey.”

* * *

We don’t sleep well, and neither does the baby where she’s huddled in a mass of blankets between me and Sataa in our small tent, the cold rain that permeates the coast splattering against the canvas. 

I draw a wisp to distract her, and we all fall asleep in it’s dim glow.

* * *

We buy more things for the baby when we pass through the village near the estate - there’s not much _to_ buy from the open-top wagons parked near each other in some semblance of market stalls. 

More diapers are a must-have. I cannot adequately describe my frustration and disgust for cloth nappies. 

Adaar and Meraad help buy things, too.

Sataa’s holding the baby when we walk past the village’s Chanry; no one suggests leaving her there.

* * *

I hear Sataa call her ‘Feather’ when she’s blowing raspberries on her little tummy, her giggles filling the air like bells.

When I ask her about it, she says,

“We do not know her true name, nor her mother’s. The only personal affects her mother kept were feathers. It seemed… appropriate.”

* * *

It’s our first night back at base, little Feather asleep in a crate acting as a makeshift crib near our bed when the haze of emotional upheaval and stress lifts enough for me to _actually_ think about some things.

“Sataa,” I start, meeting her gaze from where she’s cleaning her face, readying for sleep. “Are we keeping her?”

She blinks at me. “I thought we already were.”

* * *

It’s not that simple of course - deciding to keep a baby, be responsible for a baby, in our line of work, and with the knowledge of what the future will become not far off in the horizon. 

Will she be safe in a Chantry orphanage, after the Divine is murdered and countless Mothers and clerks of any standing are killed in the Conclave? Will she be safe as the daughter of a mage? Will she be safe as an obviously mix-blooded child? 

There’s so many concerns, and we discuss it all, of course.

Is the base safe for a child? Can we provide for one? Are we prepared to be her guardians? Do we fully understand what that entails? 

Where will we keep her? What if we’re both on jobs at the same time? What about the Conclave? The Inquisition? 

What of _her_ future?

* * *

Sataa tells me of Velvet’s visit when I was at the marketplace deep in Jader - merchants tend to give marginally better rates to a human than Tal-Vashoth. 

Velvet and Arnaud have purchased a small hovel near the docks, intending to raise their baby there. She offered to take Feather with them, raise her in a family home. 

Sataa refused, although she tried to do so gently.

“It is what they thought best,” she tells me. “It was a kind offer… Generous. But,” and here I notice her holding Feather a little tighter, her little doll swinging around and hitting her in the chin. “I will admit that I have become attached. I… was not certain if I _could_ , or if I _should_ , but after we agreed-- I, well, she is ours.”

I wonder if little Feather knows how lucky she is to have Sataa. Her loyalty is breathtaking. 

There are tears in my eyes when I place my hand over hers, where she’s cupping Feather’s back. “I know exactly what you mean.”

* * *

Watching Feather amble around the common room on unsteady legs, trying to lift the cover from a book that’d fallen on the floor, and babbling all the while, it makes me smile helplessly, my chest tight with remembered pain.

Taarlok had asked Sataa to look over a contract for another job - a Tevinter Magister with lodgings in Val Royeaux is rumored to be performing blood rituals during his parties, and an Orlesian noble is hiring mercenaries for added protection; they’d obviously thought a bunch of Tal-Vashoth would strike a chord with the Magister. It’s a complicated mess; many implications and hidden risks. The Valo-Kas is wary in taking any jobs with either Qunari or Tevinter involvement, usually refusing such jobs.

She sighs a gusty breath, running a hand across her horns and curling her fingers briefly into her hair, and I decide to interrupt her reading.

“Where did you learn to take care of children?”

She blinks over towards me, leaning back in her chair. “Ayanna,” she says. “She would often take in street urchins, and use her Sight to find their true families.”

The images this elicits are both adorable and sad. “Is that how she found you?”

She shrugs, “In a matter.”

I hum, watching Feather drag the book around out of the corner of my eye. “Have you ever wanted children of your own?”

She sets down the parchment, looking at me steadily. “Families are different under the Qun.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She shakes her head, “I wanted to be treated as men’s equal. Children… were not something I had ever thought of until I was free of the Qun.”

I hum again, looking towards Feather. “I spent a lot of my adult life taking care of children, and even wanted to be a midwife once,” I snort. “It wasn’t until after my niece was born, and I realized that I loved her, that I ever thought of having a child.”

“You… wanted to carry a child?” The tone of her voice makes me look towards her.

I smile, I think I know what she’s thinking. “I know that’s a little difficult, with my… inclinations, and all,” I huff a laugh.

There’s a teasing lit to her voice nearly covering something much more honest when she says, “I am sorry I cannot give you a child, Kadan.”

This isn’t the first time that I’ve gleaned that Sataa’s unhappy with her biological gender, and that this unhappiness, _unfairness_ , is what ultimately drove her from the Qun. She wanted to be a protector, not a cartographer, but women weren’t warriors under the Qun. And I know that it pleases her that she’s the stronger of us. I know her eyes were first drawn towards me because of our difference in size; she is attracted to my short stature, and the fact that I’m more delicate than her. She likes to be the provider, the protector, the guardian. She’s stoic, and brave, and loyal, and I know the ideals of chivalry appeal to her. I imagine in another life she was the brave, intelligent knight of a valiant king. 

“We have a child,” I smile, jerking my head towards Feather. Sataa looks pensive, then, but I still see _something_ in her eyes.

* * *

That night, she wraps her big hand around my stomach, the palm sitting heavy below my navel, cradled in the dip between my hips. The blunted tips of her fingers, nailbeds missing or not, press firmly into my flesh. 

She holds me there, whispering Qunlat into my ear - words I don’t catch or fully understand. 

When she kisses me, it _hurts._

I don’t know what to say, or what I even _can_ say.

All I can do is be what Sataa needs.

* * *

I ask Sataa some time later if she’s comfortable with being addressed as a woman. She seems almost confused, but tells me,

“I have only ever wanted to be a woman, with a man’s respect.”

I don’t think that’s entirely it, but she seems happy with who she is now - free of the Qun, free to be herself, and part of our small, mismatched family, complete with extended relatives in the form of our kith.

* * *

Adaar helps me find what I’d wanted - something we’d discussed forever ago.

I give Sataa hers when we’re outside one day, eating dinner by the dimming sunlight, Feather on a blanket before us messily munching on cubes of soft bread and softer cheese.

She is silent beside me, the simple golden bands of differing size glinting in the soft rays of light where they’re sat in my open palm. “Married couples wear rings, where I’m from.” It seems almost silly, we’ve been together for so long. But now with Feather, and everything… The Conclave will happen soon enough, and then the Inquisition. And I’d thought, it’d be nice if we had something other than our necklaces; something the Chantry folk would recognize, and something from both our cultures.

“And the Chantry would recognize us as the Celestine family with these,” I tack on, nervously. “It might’ve been a bad time to buy these… With Feather and everything, but I thought- I know it’s stupid, we’re together regardless, but…” I trail off, a breath of frustration leaving my lips.

She drops the bit of charcoal she was sketching with while we ate - a half-finished drawing of Feather in her sketchbook, smiling a gap-toothed cherubic grin. She takes my hand, closing our fingers around the bits of gold.

“It is not stupid,” she tells me seriously. “I would be happy if we wore human wedding bands. It is no trouble, Kadan.”

* * *

I _love_ Sataa.

* * *

One day Adaar offers to make a necklace out of the feathers that we’d decided to save for our daughter - when she is old enough to understand, she will no doubt want something of the woman who’d given birth to her and died for her. Adaar refuses any kind of payment, and says it’s a belated wedding gift for two of his closest friends.

Adaar’s good with knots - he uses hemp string and cotton to weave a bohemian-looking mantle necklace, the same colors as the emblem on the staff and robes her mother was wearing. It’s beautiful and intricate, and Sataa offers to wear it until Feather is big enough to.

We keep her mother’s comb and staff for her too. Sataa sketched her mother and had the small drawing framed - her interpretation of the woman as she would be in her prime, smiling and happy.

It’s not enough, but we hope it’ll help bring her comfort some day.

* * *

When Shokrakar announces that we have been offered a contract to be security for the Conclave, I’m not ready for it.

* * *

  
  


We discuss it in hushed whispers, when afforded privacy. We decide to stay behind in Jader while the majority of the company accompany the Chantry Mothers to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. 

We have Feather to think of.

It’s not an easy decision to make, knowing what we know.

We tentatively agree to join the Inquisition once they’re in Skyhold - with or without the rest of the Valo-Kas. I’m hoping that Adaar and his advisers can be convinced to hire the company on. They hire Bull’s Chargers, why not the Valo-Kas? If not, there’s still nothing to stop us from joining the Inquisition on our own.

* * *

“Is this safe? Should we not stay in Orlais until this Corypheus is defeated?”

I look at Sataa, and I feel my eyebrows drawing together. “We’ve discussed this - we can help.”

“At what cost?” She’s not being cruel, just… concerned. 

“This affects all of Thedas; there will be rifts and demons everywhere. Even Orlais.” I take a breath, my voice lowering with my confusion, frustration, “We’ve talked about this.”

“Yes, but we did not have our daughter to consider then.”

“We’ve discussed it since,” I pause; it seems she’s having second thoughts. “Could you honestly stand by and do nothing when the world is falling apart, and you could make a difference?” 

“But is it best to bring a small child into this chaos? To bring her to an army’s keep?” She drops her head, reaching a hand out to touch my arm. “She is our responsibility to protect, not Thedas.”

“I know,” I tell her, voice softening along with my expression when I take her hand, twining our fingers together. “She wouldn’t be the only child there; Skyhold is safe - or it _will_ be.”

Sataa is the one who’d encouraged me to embrace this path before, and she’d seemed resolute to help as well. Now with Feather… I definitely have my reservations - depending on the path Adaar chooses, things could be _different_ , but I have faith in my friend. I trust that he would carry the Inquisition on a good path - one that promotes peace and equality and unity in Thedas.

“Any army that Adaar raises will be full of good people and do good things, I’m sure,” I tell her. 

“Let us see, then,” she tugs on my hand, beseechingly. “Let us wait and make a decision when we know for certain. You have said that there are a few paths this future could take, with some matters staying the same. We cannot judge if the Inquisition will be safe, at this time.” 

* * *

We prepare to say goodbye to our kith, and I wonder which of them will die in the blast, who’ll be stranded, kidnapped, or worse in the coming days. Internally I’m warring with my emotions and convictions, but I know I cannot say anything - my knowledge must remain a secret. There’s too much at risk; what if Solas found out?

I convince Adaar to implement a backup plan in case things go to shit - which they will. The unit he’s in charge of agree to meetup at Haven if they get separated, or anything of the like. He discourages them from wandering, stressing the need to have a fallback position at my encouragement. They strategize their positions, reviewing the maps the Mothers had provided, and I try to encourage them to stay on the trails leading to the Temple before the Conclave starts - citing a need in providing support against any potential riots or violent protests. I’m hoping this will prevent the most deaths as possible of my companymen - I don’t think the Conclave has even started when the Temple explodes. 

Adaar had wanted me and Blade to advise on the strategy for the job. Even though I turned down the work, he’s still seeking the advice of the two mages in our company. The Valo-Kas have been charged with the safety of the pilgrims and ranking officials attending the Conclave. Mages and Templars will fight; people will be scared and lash out. Violence will happen, and it disgusts me to think, but I hope the unrest of the villagers and pilgrims will be enough to divert the unit’s main focus away from the Temple. As fucked up as it sounds, riots in the streets will save my friends’ lives. 

The unit will soon leave to accompany a group of Chantry folk from Val Royeaux and Jader. 

* * *

One thing I always forget; I am a mage, and that means something here, more than my surface thoughts on it, or my intimate knowledge of magic.

It means I will be victimized, prejudiced, and scorned for this part of me that I cannot do anything about. 

I’m cautious by nature, and even after all this time, still uncomfortable with much of Thedas, so I’m not faced with these things as much as someone else in my situation might. But perhaps it’s because I’m such an outsider - I forget. I make mistakes. I use my magic a little too liberally in the base or on jobs and can attract unwanted attention. 

I haven’t ever really thought on what my carelessness may cost someone else, though.

In the days leading up to the Conclave, people go crazy. Orlais is so heavily entrenched in Chantry politics, that the whole country - even far-away Jader, is a hotbed for mage-Templar conflict and socio-political unrest. 

I have been aware of the rumors of riots and rampaging Templars for some time, but even so, ignorance led me to believe our little corner of Thedas was immune. 

It is the day after Adaar’s team leave to rendezvous with the escort-group to Haven when it happens. 

Feather is being babysat by Velvet while Sataa and I venture to the market to make several purchases in preparation for things to come - we’re not sure what affect the Conclave will have on commerce, and we need to make sure all our bases are covered - for us, and whoever may need help out at the base.

Sataa gets a deep gash in her palm from a broken crate of preserves, and I absentmindedly heal it. 

Someone was obviously _concerned_ or something, and alerted a Templar - or, more likely, a former Templar with a significant grudge against mages. 

Well, _Templars_.

They attack us while we’re browsing fabrics. 

There were four of them.

They scream a bunch of nonsense - vitriol against mages and Qunari and everyone who they claim is a stain against the Maker’s vision - while they beat us, kicking us to the ground. They had caught us off guard, and even Sataa has trouble holding her own. 

No one intervenes - no vigilante citizens or guardsmen or Chevaliers. Everyone hates mages and oxmen - think we should all be dead for simply existing. They probably revel in my screams as I’m cut with a magebane-coated blade against my cheek, blade piercing into my mouth. Hell, they probably find some sick satisfaction in watching Sataa’s hand being severed along the faint mark left behind from my healing. 

I lose consciousness to the sight of Sataa lying in the dirt, face and limbs stained with blood and sounds of pure agony being forcefully ripped from her throat.

* * *

I’m not sure where I am when Arnaud finds me, but I remember his face. I remember feeling wisps in the space between us.

* * *

Velvet has her hand in my hair when I come-to next. 

She hushes me when I start to panic.

“Sataa is safe,” she tells me calmly when I demand to know where she is, what happened.

“How?” It’s all I can think of; if she is safe, then how? How come I don’t hurt?

“She made it back here on her own,” Velvet’s expression is strained beneath the calm veneer. 

“How is she not-- how am I?”

She sets her hand on my shoulder, “We know a healer.” Her expression is pained. “Little Aban had trouble breathing awhile ago, and we were afraid for him. The midwife knew him. And so we… we know how to find him.” 

“Why isn’t she _here_?” 

“She’s with the healer. After Arnaud found you… Well, he had to see you quickly, so he wasn’t finished with Sataa.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” she tries to placate me, her face screwing up as she adjusts the blankets tucked against my legs. “I need to tell you something.”

I blink at her.

“I know it’s…” she trails off, huffing a breath and seeming to force herself to meet my gaze. “You were attacked.”

“I know.”

“No,” her expression is a terrible thing, and she seems to be struggling for words. “You were- it was horrible. I’m-I’m surprised you weren’t already dead when Arnaud brought you in.” She takes my hand, “They hurt you,” she stops again, grasping my hand tight, and my brain is too clouded over to really understand. “They had beat you, you- you have hair missing, teeth, and you still have marks.”

“I’m sore,” I admit at another pause.

“The healer said it will take time to recover.” I can feel her tremble before she says, “You _had_ died; the healer said it felt like blood magic.”

I’m trying to wrap my mind around this. “Blood magic killed me?”

She shakes her head desperately. “He said it saved you, and he thinks it was blood magic. He thinks you’re a blood mage.”

“I- _no_ ,” I say vehemently. 

“I know,” she soothes. “I know you would never, not after what happened with Sataa-” She cuts herself off again, the pained look intensifying. “But he said he wasn’t sure what it was.”

“The wisps,” I guess, trying to recall the familiar feeling. “Blade said it was unusual.” Wait… “I _died_.”

“Yes,” she says, squeezing my hand. “I wanted to tell you, in case… in case he does something or tells someone. He healed you, but he-” She struggles again. “I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“My heart stopped before,” I find myself heedlessly telling her. “When I was a baby, but they saved me.”

“Well, you’re saved again.” She stands from the bed.

“Is Sataa really okay? Feather?”

She nods, “I’ll check on Sataa for you. And Arnaud is with the children. All’s as well as it can be, I swear it.”

“Thank you,” I whisper as the door closes behind her.

Thoughts flit through my consciousness as I slump in the bed, feeling utterly drained. When I succumb and close my eyes, it’s to the image of a boot stepping on Sataa’s forearm while a knife held in a gloved hand cuts viciously into her palm, the grotesque sounds of severed flesh and crunching bones almost quiet beneath horrific screams.

* * *

I must fall asleep, for I wake to the sight of Arnaud sat in a chair, his infant son on his lap and Feather toddling towards the bed I’m laid in.

My head still hurts something fierce, my entire body throbbing and my eyes stinging with a mixture of grief and remembered fear. I hold my hands out to my daughter and hold her to my chest. She’s babbling - a mixture of mama and nonsensical chatter, and I have to consciously tell myself not to squeeze her too tight.

Arnaud stands and hands me a thin vial filled with a pale, yellowish liquid. “Velvet couldn’t stomach telling you everything.” He presses the vial into my hand, “You were forced.”

I look at the vial uncomprehendingly, distracted some by Feather snuggling up under my chin and my myriad of hurts. 

“What?”

He clenches his jaw and looks distinctly pissed, but his anger doesn’t appear to be directed at me, if the way he is glaring at the wall is any indication. His bright eyes meet mine steadily, and his nostrils flare. He’s silent for all of a second before he says, “Those dathrasi shite forced themselves on you.”

I’m quiet, mind completely and utterly blank in shock. He takes this as further not comprehending, “You were dying, and they brutalized you.”

“I _understand_ Arnaud!” I shout, and feel bad for all of ten seconds, mind a complete _mess_. 

“I was told that elixir will stop anything from taking,” he says calmly, scooping Feather from my leaden arms and leaving the room with the children against his chest.

* * *

What has happened?

* * *

After I’ve emptied my stomach into a basket full of linens and dry-heaved until black spots danced in my vision, I try to look at myself. 

There are faint bruise marks in the shape of fingers on my hips and thighs, half-healed scratches on my ass and legs that look like scrapes from falling, and when I touch myself, my stomach clenches and it feels like I’m going to vomit again. I can’t force myself to check further, but I believe Arnaud. A woman doesn’t get bruises on her hips like that, unless…

This happened to my sister. It was so long ago now, but I remember what I felt then, as an outsider trying to help her. She had bruises, too. I took her to the emergency room, stayed there all night, was with her during the panic attacks and always helpless on the sidelines during the investigation and following trial and conviction. 

It shaped my sister. She was forever different. 

If I close my eyes and think about it, I can almost recall what I felt during… Or maybe that’s just me _trying_ to remember what happened. Why would I want to remember something like that? But I can’t help it. It all feels wrong. _I feel wrong_.

* * *

I need to see Sataa. 

When I force myself to my feet, down the hall and past the kitchen, I find them. The mage Velvet knows is beside her where she’s laid out on a bedroll. Arnaud and the children aren’t there, but Velvet is. When she notices me, she helps me to sit beside her.

The mage’s hands are poised over Sataa’s chest, and his eyes are closed. So are hers. 

She’s so still. Velvet had said she was alright, though.

“Is she okay?” I ask, and my voice sounds hardly like my own.

The mage’s eyes open, and they’re as cold as blue ice when they meet mine.

“I gave her a sleeping drought. Fortunately for you lot, I am a trained Spirit Healer. I’ve managed to stop the bleeding, and I’m relatively certain her risk of infection is low, but I can’t do anything about that,” and he nods down toward her stomach, where her hands are laid against her ruined tunic.

Her left hand is wrapped to the wrist in red-stained linen, the right bruised and caked with flecks of dried blood. I know without looking too closely that her fingers are gone, part of her palm has been severed, and all she now has on that hand is a thumb.

My eyes burn as much as my chest, but I don’t think I can cry anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, rubbing a hand gently against her hair. Her face is swollen, too.

Something occurs to me then, and I almost choke when I say, “Her wedding ring’s gone.”

“We can look for it,” Velvet assures me, a hand lain on my shoulder, “I can ask Arnaud to-”

“No,” I shake my head, shrugging her hand from my shoulder. “I’m sure they took it.”

“You’re married,” it’s the mage who says it, and when I look up at him, I see his eyes drawn toward my hand, still in Sataa’s hair, the gold of the ring there dull against my skin. 

“Yes,” I say, “Sataa’s my wife.” My tone is harsh, wondering at this man’s interest, wondering at what this stranger might say or do.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” I can’t read his expression. “I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m John.”

Something whispers at me that it’s not his name. His raven hair, pale skin, and large nose giving me an odd sense of dejavu despite the haze of my thoughts and the pounding in my head. 

“Thank you,” I manage to say instead of voicing my thoughts, “For saving us.” What will it take for him not to go screaming blood mage as soon as he’s left our friends’ home? How could we possibly afford to pay him for keeping us alive? “Here,” I say, tearing the golden band from my finger, and then forcefully pressing it into his palm. “For saving us,” I repeat, holding his gaze.

He shakes his head, but pockets the ring all the same. “I would have done the same thing, you know,” he says almost conversationally as he then starts to gather his things. “I know what it’s like when the person you love is in danger, and I know what it can take to survive,” he looks up at me then. “I’ll not breathe a word of this to anyone.”

I’m not sure if I believe him when he leaves.

* * *

I apologize to Sataa throughout the night.

I wish she had never met me. I wish I was a different person. 

If she’d never met me, never followed me around like a love-sick puppy, if she never wanted me, if she never loved me, she wouldn’t be hurt. She would have both her hands, her health, and wouldn’t have to keep being hurt by me or by her association to me.

I’ve hurt her.

* * *

When Sataa finally wakes, she is shaken, weak, and her eyes are overbright. She tells me I’m an idiot and she could hear me in her dreams, that she knows what I’d said. She said she’d be dead without me, that she wouldn’t have survived that battle in the Frostbacks if I weren’t there. 

She says we both deserve life and love and each other. She says we are family, and we are stronger than the Templars who’d attacked us.

My resolve is broken, and it takes more than one conversation, more than one argument, for me to concede that she might be right.

* * *

Arnaud and Velvet let us stay with them until we’re ready to face Shokrakar. It’s clear that Sataa can no longer be a part of the Valo-Kas, and it’s clear that I wouldn’t want to stay without her.

Shokrakar does give us what she claims to be a ‘severance package’ before we leave.

We return to Velvet and Arnaud’s place, and we’re there when we receive word about the Conclave.

The Divine is dead.

* * *

“I’ve taken that away from you! All that you’ve ever wanted out of life! You can’t be a warrior anymore, and now you have to do what the _Qun_ had forced you to do to make money! This is wrong! If it weren’t for me-”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Kadan. I would gladly lose my hand than lose my _life_.” She is still and her voice is carefully modulated while I lose it, again. I am so frustrated and upset with _everything_ , especially myself.

“You wouldn’t have been put into that situation if it weren’t for me. If I wasn’t so _stupid_ to use magic like that in the marketplace.”

“No,” and now her voice is filled with a kind of quiet anger that only the most seasoned of warriors seem to possess. “Those men did this. Not you. Do not blame yourself for something that was not, and will never be, your fault.”

“You can’t hold a _sword_ , Sataa. That’s… to be able to do that, it’s what defines you.”

“No, no, Kadan. You are wrong. What defines me is my life. To be free to live my life as I see fit. And yes, I will draw maps to put food on our table. To pay back Arnaud and Velvet for their hospitality. It is not a hardship.”

“But your sword…”

“It is not lost,” she looks towards where Feather is playing in a beam of light from the opened window. “Perhaps one day I will teach our daughter to wield it.”

* * *

We have been sleeping in the main room of Velvet and Arnaud’s small home, on a makeshift pallet pulled beside the fireplace. Feather sleeps with Aban in his crib. The space is cramped, and hard on our bodies after so long, but we are fortunate even for this. Without our friends, we would be on the streets. 

I still cannot let Sataa hold me even in sleep. It is not her, but the night that draws my fears and imagined memories to the surface, plaguing my dreams and my mind before it succumbs to the darkness. 

Half-asleep, her hand creeps towards my ribs, curling around my yielding flesh. I jerk, and I can see her eyes open in the dim firelight. 

“Kadan,” she whispers, her expression visibly hurt despite the shadows. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She presses her horns further into her pillow, her expression turning to scrutiny. “You are not well. You have not been for some time.”

I look away, not able to respond. I know.

She huffs and moves her right hand carefully against my side and further down my stomach. Her hand settles just below my navel. Before the attack in the marketplace, if she held me there it would send a pleasant jolt against my skin. But now, it fills me with nausea, and my eyes burn with tears that have already been long-shed. 

“I know Arnaud told you what happened,” I whisper into the dark. 

“Yes, Kadan.”

“You’ve been patient with me. I’m sorry-”

“You have _nothing_ to be sorry for. None of this was your fault.”

I close my eyes. That’s not entirely true. “I forgot to take the vial he gave me, for this,” I move my hand over the sheet, and I press her hand against the barely-there swell of flesh.

I’ve been careful. So careful to hide the signs from her, and yes, myself, but there’s no escaping this. This is my fault. I was too preoccupied with… everything, and I misplaced the elixir. I forgot about it entirely until it was too late. I tried, I drank it, but it didn’t work; I’d waited too long.

“It took,” I say needlessly, voice barely above a whisper.

I barely eat, I barely drink, and I cannot keep anything down. I have even tried calling on my magic. There’s no changing this. I am not a blood mage. I would only hurt myself. I am not so desperate that I would risk my life over this. I have Sataa and Feather to think of. Every time I look at them with these thoughts in my head, I hesitate. I’m not a maleficar.

But there’s still no changing this.  
  


“I tried… I tried to get rid of it, but I’m not a blood mage, Kadan. I can’t- I’m so sorry that I forgot to take it when he gave me it. I can’t-”

“Shh. Shh, Kadan. You can cry, I have you. I love you. I love you so much.”

“I’m sorry, Sataa.” I let her pull me to her chest, and I can feel where her fingers are missing on her left hand where she holds me. It makes me feel like shit. I am a horrible, horrible person for letting this happen. I deserve nothing less than this.

“I’m so sorry.”

* * *

I am a burden on her.

But I don’t know what to do.

* * *

“You have to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” I know I sound petulant, but I can’t help it. She has been hovering - always looking after me, like I’m some kind of invalid. I might not be at my best, but I know when I want to eat, for fuck’s sake.

“Kadan,” she says firmly, like a reprimand. Her anger only fuels my own.

“Lay off, Sataa!” I stand violently from the table, and the chair clattering to the floor sends Feather into a fearful fit. Sataa scoops her up and starts shushing her, and she starts to calm. I scared her. I made my own daughter scared of me.

I’m a piece of shit.

“Give me the damned apple,” I growl.

Feather starts crying again at my voice, and Sataa looks at me reproachfully. “Quiet yourself.”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

“Kadan,” and it’s that voice again - the one that marks a warrior. “You should take a walk. Outside.”

I grab my cloak and stomp outside without my boots. It’s cold, but I deserve it. I deserve to be miserable.

* * *

  
  


Sataa catches me looking at my stomach sometime later. I can’t believe it sometimes, but I feel it there. I know I do.

She presses her hand against the roundness of my stomach, her one good hand so large and warm against my skin. Slowly, she wraps her arm against my back and presses her lips against the crown of my head. Her tenderness makes me feel inexplicably sad. I’m not entirely sure why, but I feel awful that she has to see me like this. I feel horrible that I’ve brought her into this situation at all. 

“You are beautiful, you know.”

I shake my head, but she insists. “You are,” she rubs her hand in small circles, and lays her cheek against my head. “I cannot begin to imagine what this is like, but you glow, Kadan. When you forget to be sad, you would make poets weep.”

I close my eyes and just let us _be_ for a bit. I know I have been difficult, but Sataa’s the saint here. She’s the one poets should honor and aspire to be. 

But in truth, I am afraid. I am so, so afraid.

“What if,” I give voice to one of my fears while I’m held in the safety of Sataa’s arms. “What if it’s a boy, and he looks like his fa-father? What if he grows up to be like him?” My voice is nothing but a whisper while horrible thoughts flit through my head.

Sataa is quiet for so long, that I’m afraid she thinks he would - that the baby would be like that. 

“Boy or girl,” she starts, and her hand does not stop rubbing circles into my skin. “The child is _ours_ , and we will raise them to be like us. They will grow to be a good person, brave, courageous, and kind. We will raise them, and Feather, to be the kind of people who will fight to defend someone who is being brutalized.”

* * *

In the deepest, private parts of my mind, I question if I will be able to love this child. 

* * *

“You should know,” I tell Sataa one day, after I’ve heaved my guts for the upteenth time and I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. “That my mother and sister both had difficult pregnancies. They both almost lost their children close to birth. I had to be cut from my mother’s womb, so did my niece. My mom was sick for a long time with me. She told me I would be high-risk if I ever had a baby.”

“You were cut from your mother, and your mother lived?” 

“Yes.”

* * *

“Names are important to you, you must have thought of something.”

“No,” I laugh, while I swat away her hand from tickling my side. 

“Nothing?”

“Fine,” I huff playfully. Today’s been good - I’ve been able to eat, and Sataa’s been playful, happy. Her joy is infectious. “George,” I say without thinking, trying not to laugh as she tickles me again.

George is something of an inside-joke between my sister and I. Ever since we were kids, we’d name anything, including pet rocks and stuffed animals, ‘George’. 

God, I haven’t thought of that in forever.

I manage to push her hand away again, and I’m suddenly caught up in the memories. 

“Are you alright?” Sataa asks with worry chasing away the joy in her eyes, and that shouldn't happen.

“Yeah,” I say. The pain will always be there, but I can still try to be happy despite it. “Do you have any ideas for a girl?”

* * *

I wish I would remember that, to be happy despite the pain.

* * *

“I’m scared, Sataa.”

* * *

“He’s not breathing. Sataa, why isn’t he breathing?”

“Trust in the midwife, Kadan.”

“Oh God.”

“The Maker will not take this child, I swear to ya missus.”

There’s a cry, then, when I feel my heart shatter in my chest. I love this baby. I didn’t think I could, but I’ve loved him before he was even born. But his cries are tiny, so delicate, and he’s _alive_. 

“He sounds like a kitten,” I say in a watery voice, my vision obscured by tears.

“Here ya are, ma’am. What’d I say? Trust Gertie to deliver the babes. They always come out right with me,” the midwife winks, and I feel her press the wrapped bundle into my leaden arms before I even look down. 

The woman is a poor, casteless dwarf. The same midwife Velvet had, and the only one around that’d work for the families the Chantry turns away. I owe her my child’s life.

He was breech, and he wasn’t breathing, and it felt like I was _dying_ for hours, and hours, but he’s _alive_. 

I love him.

I do.

“George Kitten Celestine,” Sataa says, laying a careful hand atop his small, bald head. His face is squished and whitish in patches, but he’s still crying little kitten mewls. I’ve never heard anything better in all my life.

“ _What_ ?” I laugh at Sataa. I might not have heard right, but I swore I heard her say _Kitten_. 

“You have three names,” she smiles down at me. 

I love her too.

But... “We are not naming our son _Kitten_ ,” I laugh again, and it hurts to laugh, but I’m delirious and full to bursting with so much emotion. “Pick a different name,” I say through giggles, trying hard not jostle little George too much. God, he looks like a George, doesn’t he?

“Our daughter is Feather, how about Fur?”

“No, Sataa!”

“Griffin,” she says after a moment, and her expression is so tender, her silvery eyes trained on George’s little face, with only tenderness in her voice. “Part cat and bird, for his sister. A brave, strong animal. Almost as fierce as a dragon.”

“Alright,” and I’m crying again. God, I’m just… exhausted, overwhelmed. I don’t have the words. “George Griffin Celestine.”

“I just have to say, I’m really glad y'all didn’t go with Kitten or Fur, no offense missus.”

* * *

He’s so little I feel like I’ll break him.

* * *

“I think we ought to look for a home of our own,” Sataa says with a pointed look at the mess that’s become our friends’ home. They have been so generous and understanding, but I know we’re making things difficult for them.

“Where would we go? Nowhere’s really safe, not with all the Rifts and demons and everything else.”

“Maybe somewhere else in Jader, or somewhere with strong ties to the Inquisition.”

“The Inquisition’s still young,” I look down at George sleeping against her chest and Feather tucked in against her side on our cot while I prepare herbs and maps for Arnaud to sell with the trinkets he scavenges on missions with the Valo-Kas. Velvet is outside getting the cart ready with Aban. 

“Adaar says that Redcliffe and the surrounding Hinterlands are relatively safe. There has not been any major conflict there for some time. I could find work as a farmhand, and you could openly practice magic there. Be a healer, and have that clinic like you used to.”

I stop what I’m doing and stare at her in surprise. “You have been writing Adaar?”

“Yes, and he has told me many things about the Inquisition.”

* * *

When I finally meet Varric Tethras he is both what I expected him to be, and quite obviously not.

“When the big guy told me he’d asked Ruffles to help put up a couple of his old merc buddies near Redcliffe, I have to admit, this isn’t what I’d expected.” He’s holding George as he says this, the baby blowing spit bubbles at the dwarf as he stares at him with wide eyes. 

He’d had a nasty burn on his arm and hand that’d gotten infected while they were tracking, and attempting to hunt, a dragon nearby. Adaar had brought them to our home for treatment and rest, and… well, I hadn’t seen him since before… before the Conclave.

Our affiliation and dedication to the Inquisition are well known in these parts, and while I’ve treated other Inquisition soldiers, it has never been one of Adaar’s closest companions, or Adaar himself until now.

Sataa and Feather are outside with the others; it’s a little surreal.

“I owe Adaar more than I could ever repay him,” I say quietly, putting away my supplies while Varric coos at my son.

“Seems to be a common theme with that guy,” he says offhandedly while sitting George on his knee to tickle his belly.

The child laughs, and the bright sound brings a smile of such unbridled joy to Varric’s face. It’s not what I would have expected; Varric’s a natural with him.

“You’re good with him.” For some reason, my words dim the smile on Varric’s face and I wish I hadn’t said anything.

He hums after a moment, ruffling George’s curly hair. “He looks like you.”

Something clenches in my chest at that, it might be relief. “Really?”

“It’s all in the hair, eyes, and nose,” he says, smiling softly at my son. “Where’s the father?”

My body tenses up, and for some reason I think this is some kind of retaliation, but that doesn’t quite make sense, not from him. “There’s no father. George and Feather have two mothers.”

“Ah,” his eyes flick up towards me, “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“I’ll need a drink before I tell it,” and we share a laugh. It’s not easy, but I’m inclined to like Varric; I’ve always held a certain opinion of him, despite the strangeness of my situation.

I almost want to ask him how Adaar’s doing, but I don’t think he’d tell me the truth if I asked. 

* * *

We host them for dinner - Adaar, Varric, Bull, and Dorian. Adaar’s cuddling both our children while everyone’s engaged in conversation over food. There seems to be several conversations going on at once, and I’m not even able to follow it anymore. I’m just looking at everyone, basking in the happiness. 

I know times like this are rare, and I treasure it.

* * *

I’m glad Adaar didn’t bring Solas; if there’s anyone I fear of meeting, it’s him.

* * *

Sataa and I have many discussions on it, what the future might hold. I feel like we’re all starting to settle, finally, that despite how Corypheus is still a threat, fear is no longer prevailing over every day.

There’s hope for a good life here, and it's a fragile thing.


	3. Epilogue

Twenty years later... 

_What is the purpose of all this? Why was I brought here, taken from the only world I’ve ever really known and brought to this? To Dragon Age?_

“This is Mom’s handwriting.” The young woman is crouched before an open trunk, a single lantern of mage-light illuminating the space around her. There is a sword much too large for her slight frame strapped to her back, but she isn't hunched over due to the weight of the weapon, but rather the weight of what she's found.

“The glyphs _did_ feel like hers,” the young man beside her says while he looks around the dark space warily, grasping his old Starkhaven-made staff a little too tight. “But I’m not certain. Are you sure that’s hers?”

“Yes, George,” she snaps, closing the journal of bound scraps of paper together with a less-than-impressive snap of the binding. “It’s in English.”

She bends over the open trunk again, “There looks like there’s some old writings in Trade by… Genitivi, maybe. And some Inquisition documents. Trade and Orlesian… These look like Tama drew them. What is all this?”

“I don’t know, just like I don’t know why Mom and Tama left in the first place,” the young man sighs before raking a hand through his unruly hair in agitation. 

“They left us this for a reason, protected it with magic.”

“There was always things about Mom that didn’t make sense, Tama too, while we were growing up.”

“Maybe it had to do with the Inquisition, you know Viscount Tethras can never tell a straight story about what happened. And others gloss over things. The literature has holes.”

“They never spoke about it.”

“They didn’t talk about a lot of things with us.”

She glances back at the trunk. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

“Maybe… maybe someone could use this, you know, if… if you think that’s why they left it. Maybe there’s something in there that could help.”

She barks a humorless laugh. “Help save the world?”

“ _Yes_ ,” the young man answers heatedly. “You know what Tama says about helping the helpless.”

Her expression sobers as she stares at her younger brother, at his fierce, determined expression. She’s long since stopped being jealous and angry that he shares blood with their mom, and as they’ve gotten older, the two now share something like mutual respect. He’s right, she realizes, they don’t know how important these documents could be, or how much good they could do in the right hands. 

“Sorry, Georgie,” she mutters, her gaze flicking away from him. “Let’s start going through this stuff. See if we can find anything useful.”

He smiles at his sister, and pries one of his hands from his staff to drape a comforting arm around her shoulders, disturbing her wide necklace of woven feathers a bit. “Help save the world? And maybe find Mom and Tama?”

She huffs, but there’s no heat behind it. “Quit being so idealistic.”

“It’s not idealism, it’s _hope_ , Feather. And I think Mom was wrong about it, hope can save people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Then Feather and George team-up with the next Hero in the DA series using the knowledge their mothers left them, then the rest, I leave up to you dear readers!


End file.
